moneyblows books & music

Mid August 2011

2011-08-15T17:29:00.000-04:00

Our son and his wife just celebrated their first wedding anniversary. The blackberry crop has been great; we will see what this steady rain does to it. The maple tree which fell in the storm has now been picked up and sawed up. Quite a brush pile building up again. In the store, we added Paypal to our payment options. The search engines are still sending us orders for record styli. LIFE magazines and records continue to hop along. We keep adding to stuff in the barn for a big book and record sale out there.

Moneyblows Books Music at amazon.com since 1999

Biblio member since 2005

member of Global Electronic Music Marketplace since 1998

Capitalizing the Wind: allocating capital for wind energy in a political framework

If you spot the moneyblowsmobile, post a pic at Mike Moneyblows on Facebook

Clarence Clemons R.I.P.

2011-06-20T09:19:00.000-04:00

Anything Springsteen is overblown, including The Big Man's hearty sax solos.
Is it that he connected Bruce with the roots of rock'n roll? No. Rock 'n roll was a white man invention to make money off rhythm & blues.
Is it that he symbolized the brotherhood of the E Street band? Maybe. Not too many stars put a sax in the front line.
Is it that his tone perfectly complemented Springsteen's vocals? Possibly. He made Clarence an extension of his voice.
Not to diminish anyone's talent.
But anybody can play the sax.
All the rigamarole that jazz has put on sax is just that.
The tenor sax, among the others, is a particularly apt instrument for amplifying the human voice. Instead of the lips articulating, it's the tongue.
The sax is a piece of plumbing that acts like a computer. It even remembers licks.
Like most brass instruments designed for ensemble use, the saxophone is a practical response to the problem of how to make large regiments of men march into a battle and fight. The legacy of this is "parades" and many of us have marched in them. It is where "marching bands" come from and also "concert bands."
The sax, unlike most instruments, sounds like itself (or yourself) upon the first blow. Most wind instruments have places to put your fingers and thumbs which are much more intuitive than QWERTY typing.
Although the C melody and alto sax quickly became virtuoso instruments in the early 20th century, the tenor sax took a different route. Clarinet players of early jazz used it to help increase their volume, and later to create the inimitable vocal effects that make the tenor "sing" more than the other horns in its family.
Some sax players can sound as full as an entire horn section. Bruce eventually did employ an entire horn section for his big dates. What happened to the easy playability of the sax? Because of its patriotic use, it fell into the big band era. By the time jobs in big bands became scarce, the sax was already entrenched in school music programs.
Where, as it turns out, anything that can be self-taught can also be supervised.
Can this discussion be concluded without mentioning Hawk or Bird or Prez or LTD or even Kenny G?
Let's try.
Crooning began by singing into a megaphone. Recording began by playing/singing into the other end the cone. A sax is a cone with stuff on it.
How could a person become so sexy just by picking up a tenor saxophone? Countless commercials and ads get a message across without even the sound of a sax, just showing someone miming the playing of it. A didgeridoo just doesn't have the same effect.
The sax combined with a human voice can even sound spiritual.
It makes grown men cry and even famous.

2011-06-09T09:19:00.001-04:00

Moneyblows Books Music at amazon.com since 1999

Biblio member since 2005

member of Global Electronic Music Marketplace since 1998

Capitalizing the Wind: allocating capital for wind energy in a political framework

If you spot the moneyblowsmobile, post a pic at Mike Moneyblows on Facebook

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getting this graphic out of the old eMac like pulling teeth

2011-04-25T12:48:00.000-04:00

I keep the old eMac plugged in, even though the internal modem fried in an electric incident. It has nice internal stereo speakers, I got good music on it and can play some DVDs on there too.
Discovering I had nothing on the windows laptop to overlay type on a picture, I tried pulling up an ancient Adobe Photoshop. Just placing this type took almost two hours, plenty of restarts, and endlessly watching the little round palette twirl.
For quite a few years, the eMac has been a bit confused. Perhaps it never liked being adrift from the internet.
Its only connection to the outside world may be the USB connection and the still functioning DVD drive. Insert metaphor here.

Demotion of the artifact: kilogram to the dustbin of history?

2011-02-13T09:00:00.001-05:00

This link to the New York Times article may self destruct

The Broadside Ballad by Leslie Shepard

2011-01-31T14:50:00.002-05:00

The following quote comes from page 105 of The Broadside Ballad by Leslie Shepard, a book we sold today. He is referring to the descent of a ballad from its "noble" beginnings to the custody of hoarders and collectors. I found words which ring true to the task we have appointed ourselves at moneyblows books and music

“This, then, is the last descent of balladry. An ancient and noble inspiration flowered with the seasons in the countryside, passed to beggar, rogue and mountebank, was sold for pennies in the streets, finally stolen and hoarded as dry leaves in the libraries of fanatical collectors. Yet it is the same impulse that runs through the whole of our great ballad story. The range of human emotions is the same, whether a man writes a song or a thesis. One man earns an honest living, another cheats for pennies; one dies for a song, another sings for his supper. Life is a gigantic affair of many intricate and contradictory aspects, and if our elemental origins seem more heroic than the everyday passions and topics of civilization, they are none the less only part of the same picture.
The secret of the Universe may not be bought for a penny, but it is on these sheets and in the commerce that goes with them. The profound and the trivial in human affairs have always coexisted, and the real meaning of life lies in the truth that transcends both. All our affairs, large or small, are swept away in the great tide of history, and the passing pageant of life itself is as insubstantial as a dream. Everything that belongs to the everyday world of the senses is a moment only in our human consciousness, essentially ephemeral—like old scraps of paper or the words of a ballad half remembered.
There are as many ballads as pebbles on a beach, and they are of all sorts and shapes. Just as we collect new experiences and compare them with old ones, so we collect old and new songs to learn a little more about life. And collect we must, before these fragments pass away.
In 1892, The Rev. S. Baring-Gould, a great collector of folk songs and broadside ballads, wrote:
‘It is but a matter of a few years and the broadside will be as extinct as the Mammoth and the Dodo, only to be found in the libraries of collectors. Already sheets that fetched a ha’penny thirty years ago are cut down the middle, and each half fetches a shilling. The garlands are worth more than their weight in gold. Let him that is wise collect whilst he may.’”

Here's one of the ballads illustrated in Shepard's book. It adds a new range of meaning to a familiar song such as Lefty Frizzell's If you've got the money honey, I've got the time. This ballad is from the 18th century:

One morning of late, as I walk’d in great state
I heard a maiden making sad moan
I ask’d her the matter, she said, sir, I won’t flatter
I am weary of tumbling alone

O that is pity, that a maiden so pretty
And the young men so idle are grown
But a curse light upon it, and worse may come on it
If I leave you a tumbling alone

O then, says the sailor, can you fancy me
I have got gold, and got silver in store
I have brought from the sea, such a fine remedy
That will ease you of tumbling alone

Oh then, says the fair maid, if you can fancy me,
I have got plenty of money in store,
No more cross the main, to fight France nor Spain,
Nor go where the cannons loud roar

O then, says the sailor, I can fancy you,
As long as your money doth last,
She grows thick in the waist, and thin in the face,
But the sailor he steers off at last

As down in the garden there grows a red rose,
I’ll pluck it, and call it my own,
In an hour it will fade, and so will a maid,
That’s weary of tumbling alone

Frankie McWhorter: Cowboy Fiddler in Bob Wills' Band

2011-01-28T12:45:00.000-05:00

This excellent narrative, as told to John R. Erickson and published in 1997, offers some great commentary on Bob Wills' playing out of meter.
To quote from p. 34: "one time the band was recording a song and one of the musicians quit playing. Bob asked him what was wrong. 'Bob, you're playing that song out of meter.' Bob asked him what he meant by that. 'Well, you're holding that note thirteen beats and you ought to be holding it just four.' And he played it and showed Bob what he meant.
"Bob said, 'That's the way I feel it. That's the way I do it, whether it's right or wrong, and that's the way we're going to do it. If the Lord had written the first music, I wouldn't question you at all, but a man wrote the first music and for all you know, I may be smarter than he was. If you don't want to play it like this, put your fiddle up and be gone.' And the old boy left.
From page 38:
"A lot of those tunes were out of meter. When he found a note he liked, he'd hang on to it."
From page 61:
"He'd play out of tune on occasion and he'd break meter quite often. The people who were studied and professional knew that they were right and he was wrong. But what they didn't take into consideration was that he was Bob Wills, and he was signing the checks."
Frankie McWhorter was a Texas Playboy in the 1950s and 60s. Regarding his "out of tune" comment, he refers elsewhere in the book to twin-fiddling with Bob, where he played the same notes out of tune each time, because he liked it that way,and Frankie had to learn those notes and positions, as well as emulate Bob Wills' long bow technique.
I enjoyed so many of these details in the book, as they help articulate Bob Wills' blues and jazz interests, which stood him apart from all other fiddlers, and in his fame, stood him apart from all other country bands. The term "western swing," which to some seems archaic and descriptive of a certain pragmatic approach to dance music, seems to me more than ever a term of high esteem and honor, standing on its own and not just a hybrid of other things.

Use these photos to identify the mfr. and model of your record needle!

2011-01-19T17:21:00.000-05:00

Woody Guthrie, Big Bend, and making it all up

2011-01-13T14:55:00.001-05:00

Woody Guthrie's Seeds of Man was inspired by a 1931 trip the author remembered.... or mis-remembered... in 1947-8. The novel wasn't published until 1976.
By evidence of this rambling tome, Woody Guthrie wrote more about his 1931 trip to Big Bend, than about any other single topic. Although, that may be unfairly comparing songs to prose.
A visitor to the mysterious border wilderness known as Big Bend, where Seeds of Man is set, will not quickly grasp how formative was Guthrie's own visit. He was an impressionable young man in 1931 whose travels thus far had been limited to Oklahoma and Texas. Woodrow Wilson Guthrie took his family gift of music and optimism farther than any Guthrie had before. It some ways, it could be said this magical trip started it all.
In 1941 he was part of the propaganda effort for the Coulee and Bonneville dams on the Columbia River. 26 ballads in 30 days, he had so much creativity coming out of him. His autobiographical novel Bound for Glory came in 1943. As he began to feel the curse of Huntington's Disease in the late 1940's, he typed like a madman on a novel he originally titled Study Butte,calling it "An Experience Lived and Dreamed," the chronicle of a search to look for his family's lost silver claim in the Christmas Mountains.
According to family legend, Guthrie patriarch Jeremiah Pearsall Guthrie, "Jerry P.," had a brother Gid who owned much of what became the Sam Nail ranch. The remains of Sam Nail's ranch buildings, including a still-pumping water well which feeds a desert oasis, were at my last visit (20+ years ago),located a mere five minute walk from Ross Maxwell Drive in the park, clearly marked for tourists.
Jerry P. helped out intermittently on Gid's ranch, chasing cows and guarding his property against Mexican raids. On one of these forays, he discovered ore while stopping to take a drink from a mineral spring. It was assayed as $100 of silver per ton, $10 of gold, plus copper, zinc, mercury and other minerals. Jerry P. left his name on a piece of paper wired to a pile of flat rocks to mark his claim.
Instead of returning to work the claim, he was distracted by news of free Oklahoma land being given to native Americans whose names appeared on tribal rolls. Jerry P.'s second wife had been one eighth Creek, so he figured he had a shot. He moved back to Oklahoma, didn't get the land, and died before he could return to Big Bend.
When I talked with Guthrie biographer Joe Klein about this story, he said, "the idea that Jerry P. Guthrie had discovered a rich vein of silver in the mountains near Uncle Gid's ranch was one of the least likely and most persistent of family legends."
So persistent in fact, that Woody, his father Charley, brother Roy, and uncle Jeff Davis Guthrie, went on a "strange, joyous, memorable debacle" in search of the wealth.
As Seeds of Man describes, they drove from Pampa, Texas to the desert in 2 days in a broken down old Model T. As they drove into Terlingua they saw the mansion of the owner of the quicksilver mine, on the right up on a hill, where it stood when last seen. At my decades-ago visit, the building was occupied by Pam Weir, proprietor of the Desert Deli & Diner in the Terlingua ghost town.
Down below, he saw the adobe shacks of the mine workers, an image that would stick with Woody Guthrie.
Over to the east from Terlingua were the Chisos Mountains, which he would describe from memory 16 years later in his 842-page manuscript.
As the story goes, they came into Terlingua, wended their way to Study Butte, and found their way to Sam Nail's ranch. The tattered maps treasured in the Guthrie family outlined the location of the mine from Nail Ranch. Sam and his brother had found a small pocket of native quicksilver while walking to Alpine through the Christmas Mountains. Although the Nail entourage had been unable to locate the quicksilver pocket on their return trip, word of their discovery eventually led to the Wright mine and

the development of the Terlingua mining district, which extended 16 miles from Study Butte west to Lajitas, and was 5 miles north to south. When the Guthries met up with Sam Nail, they agreed to share the wealth.
Even though traces of cinnabar, or quicksilver ore, had been reported early as 1889, large scale production began around 1903 with founding of the Chisos Mining Company, and was a linchpin of the local economy until 1946 (and then again for a short time in the 1960s).
Of the novel, Joe Klein told me, "he made it all up.... it was maybe that one trip when he was really close to his dad and his uncle, and it was the kind of thing that was mostly bereft in his childhood."

Michael Feinstein's American Songbook DVD set

2011-01-12T13:35:00.002-05:00

CCultrual

This Three-Park Series on PBS is subtitled "Cultural History, Intimate Biography, and a front-row seat at great live performances." It is all that and more. The cultural history revolves around how the "American Songbook" was once focused on movies and plays, how it became a propaganda arm of the Allies in WWII, and how things changed after that war.

The intimate biography is of Michael Feinstein, not that intimate perhaps, but focusing on his acquisition of artifacts from the 20th century American Songbook, in order to keep the 21st century from forgetting them. This is the part that engaged me the most. Feinstein knocks on doors of collections both grandly indexed and-- just as likely-- sadly dilapidated. He zeroes right in on items of merit, if you believe the DVD, but editing must have helped. Though his scouting is far more glamorous than my own similar journeys, the end result is, for old musical memorabilia, the same. A temporary reprieve from the landfill.

People just don't have time to see what's on those old tape reels, acetates, records. Confronted with hundreds of pieces of historic sheet music from a relative, the inheritor is often overwhelmed. But I'm not. Michael Feinstein is most certainly not. We wade through these things because "lost" and "lost but not forgotten" are basically the same, in our narrow view. As Nicholson Baker has written, preservation of originals is something to be done for its own sake, even after all the proper digitizing has been duly accomplished.

Disk Two has two hours of archival clips showing some of the wartime uses of music for propaganda, such as Army sing-a-long films (long before Mitch Miller). The care taken in song delivery and offering the singer as a surrogate for the girl back home is striking. It is easy to imagine Frank Capra directing these. Other gorgeous live clips include Frank Sinatra in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s (Feinstein has a show called The Sinatra Project), and examples from Bing Crosby, Paul Whiteman, Rosemary Clooney, Alice Faye and many more.

The clips of Michael Feinstein's show are also very good, showing a performer in complete command of his material. Interestingly, his approach to romance, though fully drawn, lacks a female counterpart. He is only shown singing either alone or with other guys. I miss the guy-girl thing from network television in the 1950s and 60s. Those made-for-TV duos were strange bedfellows often as not, but the song seemed more "acted" sometimes.

Not much of a quibble for 5 hours of viewing, which I found myself watching with a permanent smile. It was sent along via a dear friend and patron of our store, who ordered me a copy of this great program directly from the producer, shopPBS.org. I have a link above if you want to buy it from amazon. Stash it with your other great 21st century collections of 20th century standards-- by Sting, Rod Stewart, Diana Krall, John Pizzarelli-- and everyone else in the gang that sang Heart of My Heart.

2010 at moneyblows books & music

2010-12-31T10:20:00.000-05:00

This product has become our most popular CD in 2010. We began the year selling a few of them but as the band toured, "Dynamic Sound" became a must-have for fans of Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. Our holdings have been expanded to include some great records coveted by audiophiles: the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MFSL) reissues and jazz' famed Mosaic Box Sets. We stopped selling books from the back of Harlan Wolfe's Record Shop in Conway, ending our first experiment in "bricks and mortar" sales. We've absorbed quite a few book and record collections this year, resulting in as much as 1/3 turnover of our entire stock. By any measure (month vs. month, year over year) 2010 has been a record year at moneyblows books & music. It's exciting that the new electronic book readers are steering millions of eyeballs to the joys of reading words on a page. When you think of how many people regard a "page" as starting with the word "home" or "web"--- or is something you find in a magazine or school text--- quite a few will be surprised that pages come in paper books, too. And, most books are easily obtained for a penny (ours are more expensive) so we expect 2011 to continue the trend of increased book sales. Similar to most small businesses, we are always looking for ways to advertise efficiently. In 2010 we advertised modestly using Google ads and Facebook ads. Nearly as we can tell, no customers came from the ads. As usual, customers find us either because they already know where to go, or they are intrepid enough to wade the morass of the Web to find us. Our message of "search moneyblows" still hasn't taken hold. It's a simple message--- type moneyblows into any search engine. It'll be easier than ever to shop with us in the coming year. Which starts tomorrow. So for now I'll sign off with the time honored greeting, "Happy Old Year."

Mosaic box sets-- great gifts for jazz vinyl lovers!

2010-11-12T13:14:00.004-05:00

The Complete Pacific Jazz Live recordings of The Chet Baker Quartet with Russ Freeman
The Complete Blue Note and Pacific Jazz Recordings of Clifford Brown
The Complete Blue Note Recordings of The Tina Brooks Quintets
The Complete Blue Note recordings of Herbie Nichols
The Complete Blue Note Recordings of Thelonious Monk
The Complete Verve Recordings of the Buddy De Franco Quartet/quint…

Serving dog and mammon

2010-08-18T17:25:00.003-04:00

I link to the current Ben Ratliff review of a Coleman Hawkins performance which, apparently, sheds new light on the classic "Body and Soul" that's one of Hawk's best known solos. You can look around and see the latest jazz news about William Savory's collection of disc transcriptions. Had they been released in his lifetime, or close to the time of recording (late 1930s and onward) they would be called "bootlegs" like famous recordings by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, etc.--- recorded performances by fans.
The big news is that the Savory survivors have sold the discs to the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. Even bigger is the news that they'll probably digitize and release them commercially, after giving lip service to the various ownership conundrums. The reportage on this topic, at least in the New York Times, includes some strangely annotated excerpts on their website, and a boatload of reader comments predictably bemoaning the belated and perhaps restricted access to this material.
Ben Ratliff, a real asset to the NYTimes for the jazz world, clarifies that "Nobody is yet in any position to assess when, how or what portion of the recordings can be commercially released." Since the National Jazz Museum owns the discs, which can be easily digitized, the Times is echoing Gene Kelly "Gotta Dance!" This newspaper which clearly supports "work for hire" transparently got Ratliff to write a legal disclaimer into his review. The first article, reporting the acquisition, suggests that ownership of the aircheck music on the discs is unclear. It's worth reading the comments to both articles because the ephemera aspect of a jazz solo is well displayed. And so is another chapter in the evolution of copyright practice, using old jazz as a foil.

Mitch Miller, oboe player, music exec, host of "Sing Along With Mitch"

2010-08-04T09:45:00.003-04:00

Heard of Mitch Miller's passing. Junkers, scouts and collectors know he lives on. His cartoonish visage, on the cover of "Sing Along With Mitch" albums, haunts every thrift store in America where vinyl records can be found. Astute collectors can even find the oboe concerti he recorded with great orchestras. Jazz fans can hear him on the Charlie Parker with strings recordings. Just put a name together with Mitch Miller and there is a story. Mitch Miller/Frank Sinatra. Mitch Miller/Rosemary Clooney. Mitch Miller/Clive Davis. Mitch Miller/Goddard Lieberson. Mitch Miller/Guy Mitchell. Mitch Miller/Columbia Records.
In our store at moneyblows.com, his legacy abounds in many wonderful Columbia Records. Mitch Miller made a huge impression, as artist and repertoire chief at Columbia (later, CBS Records) for most of the 1950s til the mid 1960s. Significantly, his employer invented the long playing record. For 3 years, he had a television show version of "Sing Along With Mitch."
He had a career any oboe player might envy. As I listen to his many contributions to popular music, whether it's the keening banjos behind the male choruses of "Sing Along" or the rocking celeste on Rosemary Clooney's hit, "C'mon A My House," I can imagine the sensitive ear of a double reed player in the agonizing quest to make a difficult instrument into a voice-like utterance.
In what I suspect is a more indirect influence, many Columbia Records of Ray Conniff and Percy Faith explore the blends of instruments and wordless vocals which have come back into fashion among some of today's big band composers.
In the big picture of things, Mitch Miller demonstrated how popular music was created in the corporate environment. It's illustrated in this story from another corporate musical creature at Columbia, Teo Macero. Teo reported to Mitch Miller while creating jazz classics such as "Take Five."
And, while it is quite difficult to gauge the role of artistry in a monolithic corporate environment, there's no mistaking excellence and quality where it appears.
As a baby boomer, born a month after Rosemary Clooney had her breakout hit with Mitch Miller, I had my formative years and ears under the spell of MOR, easy listening music, rife with smooth strings, sparkling tone colors, beautiful voices, songwriting and composing which optimized the America which was an ethnic "melting pot.". By the time Mitch was cajoling everyone to sing along, I like others in my generation were chomping at the bit. Top 40 radio was playing something else. Top 40 radio was advertising freedom from Mitch Miller, who hated rock 'n roll. We may have been rescued by Pat Boone and Marty Robbins, but at least it wasn't our parents' music.

Sentimental and melodic journey to New Britain

2010-05-14T15:35:00.003-04:00

I was sitting at my laptop with the Finale music notation software open, composing the solo clarinet piece that was to become “Kaleenka Suite.”
Though I love composing songs, this was going to be an instrumental solo, so I started thinking about things from an instrumental standpoint. That led me to a nice group of three: melodic motion, repetition and arpeggio.

Motion was probably one of the first musical things explored as, in 4th grade, we learned how to finger middle C, D, and E with the left hand on B flat clarinet. Yup, they were each a step apart from each other.
I thought of a song from the same auditorium at Holmes School in New Britain Ct, where the clarinet was taught. At school music assemblies we sang “My Grandfather’s Clock.” I have a great Johnny Cash version on the original vinyl record and listened to it. Yes, it’s a nice melody with motion.

By 1962 or 1963, when this was going on, I was learning more music from radio and 45 rpm records than I was in school. But school was a good venue for me, I could get decent grades, etc., so I paid attention to the music there, too. White Coral Bells. Marching to Pretoria. One was a round. One was a processional. Cool stuff.
But out there in the big world, a melody got me that sticks today, “45 cents for a 3 course meal at McDonald’s.” A commercial to music! They were called “jingles” back then. What did this melody have? It was the one note samba of the commercial world, repeating the same note.
That’s probably why I still remember it today; probably why I don’t understand bebop too well but I love playing “rhythm sax.” I love the honkers who repeat notes for effect. Always have. Repetition, very nice in music when used creatively. Doesn’t hurt a commercial message. Without it there’d be no rap or hip-hop.

Arpeggio, the mainstay of the student clarinet experience. The instrument is engineered for speed but can only play one note at a time (classically speaking), so, on clarinet, chords are outlined in arpeggios. Suddenly I’m mentally in the same auditorium where we learned clarinet, again. This time, the music teacher is teaching us to sing, “Hot tamales, sure are tasty, always made from finest pastry, so delicious and nutritious, you will like them, so buy some now.” It’s been more than forty years and that melody has come to mind frequently. Have never met anyone who knew it if I sang it. Doggone thing is sure memorable, why? The melody is arpeggios.

Facebook, enter stage left. I got my laptop open to the notation program. There’s a browser open too. I’m gonna find the teacher that taught that melody and ask if she remembers where the heck it came from. My memory is so vague, but I think folk music was on the scene at the time, on the radio, along with Motown, rockabilly, Memphis and New York soul, garage bands, etc. They even brought guitars with folk music into the Catholic church, Kumbaya, etc.

Had her name been Mrs. Jones the whole idea would have faded fast. But there was Ms. Nkonoki, right there on Facebook and basically looking the same as I remember her. I messaged her, asking first if she was the strict music teacher at Holmes School in 1963, and then, did she know where that song came from?

Yes she was; she said I remembered accurately that she was strict. She remembered the “Hot Tamales” thing was a countermelody in a song called Tamale Joe. Couldn’t remember much else about it. I went on Google and found the author’s name for Tamale Joe and also that it was a pseudonym. A reference to a possible recording by Peter, Paul and Mary. That was it. No simple internet trace of a melody that sticks in your head, perhaps only because of an arpeggio.
Well, it also had syncopation. We had heard of rhythm outside of school, on the radio and records, but this may have been the first rhythm tune taught in my elementary school memory. I would have to check with Ms. Nkonoki’s predecessor to confirm that. Both of them went to the same Teacher’s College in Danbury, Ct., the only one in the state that specialized in turning out music teachers.
Whether it made any difference that Ms. Nkonoki was the first black teacher; well, it did at the time, but I don’t know that it does now. What makes a difference now is the persistence of a simple melody. If anyone is ever composing, a simple melody will be your best friend. I also like Three Blind Mice a lot.

Ms. Nkonoki is now on the education committee of the New Britain Symphony Orchestra, and when she found out I had gone on with my music education to the master’s degree level anyway, she wondered if I might like to help judge a scholarship competition, which the New Britain Symphony Orchestra has long used to encourage talented music students in New Britain and the surrounding area.

I went down from New Hampshire to New Britain, early on the day of the scholarship judging, to check out the Young People’s Concert of the New Britain Symphony Orchestra, on its home turf at Welte Hall in the old New Britain Teacher’s College, which is now the Central Connecticut State University, New Britain’s crown jewel of education.

Ms. Nkonoki was the emcee. She had a video camera and before I knew it I was helping set up the camera. I remember thinking how strange that was, because I ran the projectors and film strip machines at Holmes School in 1962-63 and here I was in the same role, year 2010, albeit down the street at the old Teacher’s College. She was busy trying to bring order to the crowded auditorium. What a way to start a Wednesday in New Britain Connecticut, to hear the city’s namesake orchestra play to a packed auditorium of fifth graders from all over! In the late 1980s I was author of a popular book teaching children about the instruments of the orchestra, “Big Ears and His Trip To Orchestra Hall.” And, I have had a children’s group perform my songs. Felt right at home.

Most amazing of all, today’s 5th graders know an anthem that first appeared around 1977, The Star Wars theme. Talk about music transcending time. It was the fitting climax to a program that began with Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man.

So much had changed in my old home town, but the arts seem to survive in events such as this, a labor of love to make sure today’s students get to associate the name of their own home town, with an orchestra that plays with excellence. And with music they might remember for who knows what reason, like I remembered the countermelody to Tamale Joe.

Over at the scholarship competition later, we heard a saxophonist and two vocalists, performing some challenging repertoire in the nave of the magnificent South Church in downtown New Britain. Right out of the gate the performances were excellent. The judges had to consult after scoring individually to arrive at a decision. We were told nothing of the students, but when we agreed on the winner, we later found out the winner had some music prep education over and above regular school. She also had an artist level instrument.

Getting to know the other judges was fun. One of them rehearses his band at a local McDonald’s on Wednesday nights, if I wanted to come down, he said.

McDonald’s? My thought exactly. A band rehearsing at McDonald’s? Well, Sam Kimble was rehearsing and then some, that night, at the same restaurant mentioned in that influential melody, “45 cents for a 3 course meal at McDonald’s.” His band included folks from my home neighborhood, up near the top of Stanley Street, when Country Club Rd. was northmost. The whole neighborhood was cut out of woods and it was magical to us, and Holmes School meant we wouldn’t have to cross Farmington Avenue to go to Slater Road School.

Sam and his band let me sit in on clarinet, my first music played in New Britain since 1966. Bandleader Sam Kimble lays down a groove like nobody else, reminding me of my favorite past music experiences in Texas where I spent most of my adult life.

So maybe this is an exercise you can try at home. Think back on a simple melody you first heard in elementary school and figure out where you learned it. Or even make a “pilgrimage” like I sort of did.

Will you spend a day starting with a symphony orchestra concert and ending with a jam session at McDonald’s, all in the same town? I can’t guarantee that unless your town is New Britain.

Michael and Nung music video

2010-04-20T15:05:00.003-04:00

In my blog entries for April 2010 (this and the several preceding ones) I have documented the preparation, composition, practice, performance and documentation of an original work for solo clarinet, "Kaleenka Suite." The final document for Kaleenka Suite is the music video presented here. Michael composed and played the music, Nung-Hsin Hu composed and performed the camera.

From "There Was A Forest" to eternity

2010-04-15T07:53:00.005-04:00

In the previous blog I posted a selection of stills and sounds from the actual gallery reception on April 10. I played Kaleenka Suite about 3 times, beginning, middle and end of reception. The beginning take (which will be featured in a future video) had the least crowd noise. It were those eerie early moments at an art reception where in your belly you feel no one will come. Some accident of fate has happened and no one who said they would come, will actually be here. So I played. And of course people came, plenty of them.
By the third take, nearing 9 p.m., a group of 4-5 people were esconced firmly between my bass clarinet on its stand, and Loli's wall of color photos.
Like most people I dig the soundtrack to the silent movie "Metropolis" which offsets the visual.
In the third take of Kaleenka Suite, which was used on the sound collage posted yesterday, this group of people is adding their instrument. So at the end of the collage there is black over sound. Listen carefully to the conversation after the closing credits.
It's Thursday now and I-Park Open Studios is Sunday. I'll be playing my new piece "Reeverse #1" consisting of: the Saturday recording backwards through my laptop, reading a monolog or improvising, and adding some effects from my "pedal array"-- an instrumentarium including 2 tin cans, plastic pipe, glass block, and, the bass clarinet,B flat and A clarinet. I'm updating this on Friday, I wrote the monolog this a.m.

Music in a photography exhibit

2010-04-06T12:44:00.020-04:00

I was very excited to be working with Loli Kantor, whose work and method is featured in the Mar-Apr 2010 edition of LensWork. Although she just came to visit me yesterday at I-Park, we are familiar with each other's work. I knew of her theater documentation, and she knew of my jazz playing. As pointed out in the LensWork interview, Loli has been working for several years with subjects in Eastern Europe, many of whom have become her friends; and with palladium and platinum/palladium contact printing at her darkroom in Texas. In the last several years, she has exhibited in China, Ukraine ,Poland, Czech Republic and the U.S., and she opens Saturday, April 10th at the Dutch Kills Gallery in New York.

It had been several years since we saw each other, but Loli and I were able to rendezvous at the I-Park artist enclave in East Haddam, CT, where I have been working on solo clarinet repertoire. I have played solo clarinet in the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and have played with jazz trios at many museum and gallery exhibitions. Loli and I have set out to achieve some context in which the clarinet music will enhance the opening at Dutch Kills.

Oftentimes a gallery opening will have the character of a social event, and this one will be no different. But her powerful images seem to call for something bespoke. I have spent some time with an old collection of early 20th century piano songsheets, interested in extracting melodic material from them. Loli and I discussed this, and what came through, paraphrasing very generally, was that her photography would trigger the emotions, and any melodic material might enhance them. But there was no need for a "soundtrack" because the ebb and flow of daily life in Loli Kantor's work is a visual music in itself. I was seduced by this very thing as I looked through her catalog/book There Was A Forest: Jewish Life in Eastern Europe Today 2005-2008. She showed me the parts of her work featuring Alfred Schreyer, which brought to mind the klezmer sounds I fell in love with more than 20 years ago when I first learned "Gay Life in Dikanka" to play in "R. Crumb Comix" (with R. Crumb himself!) at the Hip Pocket Theatre.

We were searching for a common musical language which we knew was there. Working with a potpourri of folk melodies, I have come up with Kaleenka Suite for solo clarinet, to play at her show. The clarinet is an instrument engineered for orchestral composers, so it is the furthest thing from a folk instrument. But just as early New Orleans ragtime unlocks the key for the clarinet's role in jazz (wearing its "band instrument" hat), klezmer music unlocks the clarinet for folk music (wearing its "recorder" hat). In honor of that, I wanted my piece to begin with the A clarinet and a key signature of no sharps and flats, to make this instrument act like a folk instrument; thus the opening measures of the Kaleenka Suite are in service to the length of the tube. Many klezmers use C and D clarinets also for these reasons but I do not have those! Then, I change to B flat clarinet, a traditional orchestral instrument, back to A, and finally to bass clarinet in B flat. Going from high to low traces a breadth of range similar to Loli's in There Was A Forest. From happy to sad, from decline to revival, from celebration to work, from past to present-- the ebb and flow of daily life.

Easter walk to the cemetery, preaching to the choir

2010-04-04T17:27:00.003-04:00

Invisible Idiot

2010-03-25T11:45:00.003-04:00

This hole you see has been a distraction for me. I discovered it less than 24 hours ago. It was dug about two years ago by a performance artist, in the woods near Devils Hopyard State Park, East Haddam, CT. A group of students was touring the environmental installations here, when we "stumbled" upon it. The photos show part of an installation that was called "Two Rivers Roar." Below the picture of the hole, is a photo taken about 17 feet away, where one of the PVC pipes originates. The other one also originates about 17 feet away. From what I have been told, there is a geological fault line in the area, a characteristic of the glacial moraine which gives the topography its salient characteristics. An old friend, on whose property I am a guest for a few weeks, sent me a youtube link a couple weeks ago. It had Marco Mazzini playing contrabass clarinet. I only have a bass clarinet. So when I saw the pipes leading to this hole, I wondered, could I get a bass clarinet, or soprano clarinet, sound to go through the pipes and come out the hole? A devil's errand,to be sure.

Needless to say, this is not what I had planned for my visit here. I had planned to finish a play I had begun some years ago. Since I am so easily distracted, I brought my clarinets along to work on some solos as well. Sounds like a plan to fail but I am no Jaromir Hladik. You can read elsewhere about his success.

Back to the hole. With a hole like this, some PVC pipe, and some clarinets, the first thing that would come to anyone's mind (of course!) is, can they be joined up? Can a big sound be made? My first thought led me to the decaying waterworks of urban America. In one of my hometowns, there exist no surveys or schematics of the iron or clay sewers built as recently as the 1940s. Good thing we have video cameras, huh? I may need one. But, the first thing I have done is write to the performance artist who put these pipes in. I hope to hear back from her. I just want to know if the pipes are continuous and how they are angled. If they have holes, or open sections, it would be like putting sound into the dirt, right? Totally futile.

I don't even know if the breath from one set of lungs (or two sets in the case of a duet) can sustain a sound the 17 foot length of these pipes. But, it should would help if the PVC pipe is clear and tight. I should ask my friend if he has a sewer type video camera lying around.

On the receiving end, this wonderful hole, I would like for the hole to broadcast the sound in whatever form it comes out of the pipes. I guess the hole would need to act like a speaker, but I prefer the term "sound chimney." Anybody know how to build a sound chimney? Of course all chimneys should be "sound." But I am talking about human exhaust gas, co2, breathed through these various lengths of cylindrical bore, and vented in such a way that the music could be heard as far away as possible. Some philosophers say that music predated language. I open up this discussion: what could be put in the hole? Should the end result be a composition, a performance, or an installation? I await counsel.

Adelaide Crapsey

2010-03-10T10:03:00.004-05:00

Where the note ends

2010-03-06T11:30:00.000-05:00

The last time I took clarinet lessons was in 1988, and it was with two good college professors who knew their stuff. More than 20 years later, I'm having the opportunity to study with a master musician, one of whose many talents is representing the sound of the clarinet to millions of television viewers. After hearing him on records since the 1970s, it was my first chance to see this guy (I haven't asked his permission to write about him so you'll have to guess) last month, where he was in the guitar player's group. I knew I was going to see a master sideman at work, but I had no idea how profound. He led the band without leading it and has an incredible musical partnership with the guitar player. Even better were his telegraphing of dynamics, harmonic cues and resonance. I can't begin to tell you what it is like to have a lesson with a master musician. Well, many people can tell a similar story I'm sure.
It's making me thing of resonance, which seems to have something to do with the origin of the sound, something you can have control over and even increase resonance. On clarinet, it's a great thing to imagine. But strictly speaking, resonance, is how the note is ended. "Prolongation of sound by reflection or vibration of other bodies."
Nothing does this like a violin or drum, or a harp. The thing itself is vibrating, and some of those vibrations are going to be caught by the audience's eardrums. Resonance is going to happen.

Listening to my clarinet teacher's sound on a couple of his latest CDs, there is a way to make the clarinet resonate, and he is doing it. I am hoping some of this great articulation is transferable!

I'm thinking about practicing diminuendo on clarinet. And how to make sure the note ends with resonance.

Conway NH ain't no place for the weary kind

2010-03-05T18:00:00.003-05:00

The Oscar nominated song takes on new meaning in Anytown, USA

A Conway New Hampshire record store owner is standing up to the economy with a message that everyone can understand. It's the Oscar nominated song "The Weary Kind."

And, a connection to the movie the song is from.

I'm on his mailing list cause I shop there and have a book room in the back.

Here's a mail he just sent:

Hi, all
I'm looking forward to this Monday's Open Mic at the library, hope you are, too! Featured performer will be Andy Davis, a seasoned storyteller, sharing his global adventures in prose. Read more about Andy here!
After Andy's performance, the mic will be open to poets & songsters of all genres.
Throughout the evening, I'd like to share with you a few personal anecdotes that relate to the movie "Crazy Heart". which may win the Oscar on Sunday Night, and is currently being shown at the Majestic Theater/Conway Cafe in Conway Village. The late guitarist/songwriter Stephen Bruton collaborated closely with T-Bone Burnett in the making of the movie, in music & inspiration. Some say Jeff Bridges character was loosely based on moment's in Stephen's life, but it's all hearsay, and could be applied to any musician who struggled to make it, then struggled to maintain. Stephen died last summer during the making of this film
Back in the 70's, living in Texas, I worked a few years at Record Town, in Fort Worth, which was owned, and is still operated, by the Bruton family. You can read a bit about it here. This store was where i became enamored with the record business, and why my record shop on Main Street exists today. Listening to the theme from the movie "The Weary Kind", I'm reminded of how true the lyrics are, how they resonant to the common man, in even these times, & in this economy, in our town.
I'd like to share my rendition of this song at the end of the open mic, and would love for anyone who feels it to join me as well. There's a great YouTube link to song, with lyrics. Bring your guitar, tambourine, marxophone (Katherine?), or just sing along! And don't forget to see the movie at the Majestic this week...Joe Quirk has even offered to provide some finger foods from the Conway Cafe to us all Monday night!.
See you there,
Harlan

Small business finance advice from 1999

2010-02-21T09:31:00.002-05:00

A few people have asked where they can find some of my decade-old articles on small business finance. Here are the links. They are drastically in need of updating, but also contain some advice that is always timely.

Defining Key Financial Ratios

Five Severe Warning Signs of Cash Flow Problems

Action Plan: Forecasting and Cash Flow Budgeting

Key Questions to Ask a Prospective CPA

Turning Assets Into Cash

Action Plan: Debt Management and Banking

Action Plan: Using Economic Forecasts

Choosing Accounting Software

Debt Management and Banking: Establish a Contingency Plan

Establishing Credit Limits

Collection Techniques to Avoid

Vinyl Record Musing

2010-02-19T12:10:00.001-05:00

It seems like 1-2 million new vinyl records are sold every year....up some years and down others....and who knows how many previously owned vinyl records have changed hands. In the midst of all the arguments over which has the better sound, it's easy to forget a primary distinction.
Going back in time, people used to compare radio sound, recorded sound, and live sound. All of it was "analog," whatever that means.
Consider the vinyl record. Even though it is mass produced, the sound comes from grooves cut in the record. Compared to a CD, or mp3, or wav or wma, it IS LIVE MUSIC. The record is making that music. What happened before the record was made may have involved tape or even digital mastering, but the RECORD IS PLAYING MUSIC.
The digital file, by contrast, is re-constructing music which resides in digital code. And, it's truly amazing how this has become the primary way of listening to music. People love it, while at the same time, it has laid waste to the whole business of music distribution and live performance.
The art of the club DJ was once about the vinyl record. Now software can do just about the same thing.
Selling records since 1997, we seldom know the age or motivations of our buyers. We've been selling books the same amount of time and most years, records are more popular than books.
Records--- bulky, labor-intensive, delicate--- are a big export from the USA to other countries.
And perhaps many people play them only once.
But, the intensity of that one play experience cannot be denied. The record, the music, the effort that went into it, and its cultural significance are handy stimulants available to anyone for a dollar and up.
The most fun of records is going back in time. Most people do not realize that before the late 1940s, records were mostly documents of a performance, rather than a corporate concoction in a studio that started out with the "raw materials" of musicians playing.
Many record fans are eventually led back to the 1920s and 1930s when recording was often a game of 'catch as catch can'.
Perhaps one day digital re-creations will display their lineage of romance and culture. It's probably a matter of demographics.
One artist who worked well with the detritus of analog imagery, including records and TV, was Nam June Paik.
The vinyl record has earned its place in the fields of mass production AND art.

Toyota, chain saws, and war

2010-02-10T13:55:00.002-05:00

I was going to put a picture of my Toyota and my chain saw side by side, but that's just dumb. You can guess which one prompted a visit to the "walk-in" clinic the other day.
I had been wondering about these facilities and how they advertise as sort of a convenience store for minor medical conditions, etc. As I walked in, around 9 in the morning, three people were having an office tete-a-tete around the water cooler in the reception area. They were drinking little paper funnels of water as fast as they could. They seemed to have come from the same workplace, but were surprised to see each other there.
One guy said, "last time, I had a week's notice." The girl said, "They just called me last night." Then she said, "I could sure use a beer right now."
That little encounter helped me speculate one use for the walk-in clinic. It helped me, too. Ever been to a walk-in clinic? First I was seen by an RN, who prepped me for stitches. Then came an MD, who declined to suture. Finally, an EMT, who gave me a tetanus shot.
The MD who wouldn't stitch together my palm wound said, "Chain saws are the next most dangerous thing to war."
Nice emphasis, doctor.
And, food for thought. Because he left out..... automobiles.
Having driven Toyotas since the early 1980s, I haven't lost any sleep over not being a "Chevy man" (default position in 1960s and 1970s) any more.
Others might prefer the safe haven of a Volvo or a Suburban but I drive "tin cans" because they use less fossil fuel.
Many Toyota owners are hearing about problems with this car company, voiced loudly by the current managers of General Motors--- the U.S. Government. It seems Toyota-- according to the U.S. Dept of Transportation-- was not too quick to take the blame for random acceleration of their cars.
Actually I applaud them for hesitating to put the blame on an inanimate object, considering tort reform is not happening any time soon. And, even considering that the inanimate object is of their own manufacture.
Word the wise: Internal combustion engines are the next most dangerous thing to war.
Stepping on a gas pedal is done by a human.
Lest we forget, there are not too many things a car can do by itself that are against the law. In some places, being in your front lawn without a current registration is one of them.
Most problems with cars seem to involve a driver.
I was sitting in front of an old glass-front 7-11 back in the 1980s, in a rented Ford Pinto. I was not very familiar with the car. I put it in drive instead of reverse, hit the gas, and you know the rest.
Got lucky and only broke the glass.
As busy as most drivers can be, doing things that do not contribute to driving, we are fair game for the notion of a "runaway car."
How do you tell if you have a runaway car? Perhaps if you turn off the ignition and it doesn't go off?
I had a fussy gas pedal once and I learned how to stick the tip of my foot under the pedal and pull it back.
OK, driving a car that is about to be recalled isn't for everybody. Nor is using a chain saw, even with all the necessary safety accoutrements.
Which I have now bought, by the way. Shout out to the folks at Windy Ridge in Tamworth.
And, I look forward to a real good deal on my next Toyota. Anybody got a Tundra they don't trust? I live dangerously.

Amateur on a pro stage

2010-01-18T11:15:00.003-05:00

I've had plenty of luck, I’m just not talented. I'm suited to finding and offering items online at moneyblows books and music. I've often helped the store by playing music gigs, but the pay has gotten so minimal that my music-playing has joined the culture of "we play but don't look down on us because we have other livelihoods."

When I moved to New England at the age of 54, it was a revelation to me that music playing is divided between pros and amateurs. The point was driven home last night by the leader of the group I played with, at the Press Room in Portsmouth, NH.

There seemed to be a ritual modesty in place. The leader started out the evening with a lecture to the audience that we are a group who will play for weddings, but we mostly play for fun. When I think of playing for fun, I think Albert Ayler must have been having fun. Coltrane must have been having fun. Sun Ra must have had fun. But playing Route 66 or Girl from Ipanema for fun? Where I come from, that was for money.

I'm taken back to when playing for fun was also full of promise. There was one time when my audience actually included Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. T-Bone Burnett could tell you more about this. We actually had notice a week in advance it was going to happen. Every Friday and Saturday we played at the New Bluebird Night Club on Horne Street in Fort Worth. This would have been in 1975 or 76, when the Rolling Thunder Revue came through to play the Tarrant County Convention Center. Part of the Rolling Thunder Revue was J. Henry Burnett, a Fort Worth producer and performer who had just finished producing a live album at this location with Robert Ealey and the Five Careless Lovers. When I joined the band, it made more than five, so our lead guitarist, Little Junior One Hand, renamed the band Robert Ealey and the Drifting Heartbreaks. With no specific number we could also add Johnny Reno to make two saxes and others as needed.

The weekend before this happened, T-Bone Burnett sent word. That began a week of hell for me, wondering how I might contribute to making this a good diversion for T-Bone's illustrious friends. I could barely play the sax enough to stay on the Robert Ealey gig, and look who was coming to see it? The day they were supposed to come, I must have started drinking beer early, for I was plastered by the time the gig began at about 10 p.m. Surely enough after the Rolling Thunder Revue got off their Tarrant County Convention Center show, a limo with Bob and Joni somehow found its way down to Horne Street, in the Como section of Fort Worth, and the New Bluebird Night Club. They pulled up in front on the corner of Horne and Wellesley and came in while we were playing “Ill Take You There.” You could spot each of them, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, by their hats.

I wished for the ghost of Willie Lee Johnson to take over my sax. He was a local guy who had played with Ray Charles for awhile and was being seen sporadically around Como and the Trinity River Bottoms in the mid-1970s. He came to the Bluebird once while I was playing. I let him borrow my tenor and during his solo he threw the sax up in the air with one hand and caught it with the other. I thought, if I lose my sax to Willie Lee Johnson, there are more expensive lessons out there in life. Because that cat could wail. He didn't drop the horn but there was a second when I thought he might. After his solo he basically passed out and a few weeks later we heard he passed for good.

The Bluebird had a motto "Everybody's Somebody at the Bluebird." Nobody was pros or amateurs. I've tried to maintain that illusion about music playing, but reality doesn't bear it out. I hosted a jazz jam for many years. As time went by the students sounded more like students and the pros were astounding. Folks like B.J. Crosby or Marchel Ivery were a regular occurrence. Over time, with fewer pros out there on live gigs, the music I've played has been taken over by students and teachers. Many teachers are also pros. Last night in Portsmouth, we announced ourselves as amateurs, "truth in packaging." None of us teach or depend on venues for our groceries. And it wasn't Willie Lee Johnson who came to mind in my sax playing. I visualized a local guy, a well known sax player, who triggers excitement around these parts by playing a lot of notes. He's a pro. I thought of him and pleasing the audience the way he does.

So, I played a lot of notes. Even amateurs can play a lot of notes!!!

Facebook has a bouncer now

2009-12-16T09:15:00.001-05:00

I was bounced at the door of Facebook. All my credentials were in order but I didn't pass the intelligence test, which consists of a wizard giving two choices: "Recommended settings" and "Old settings." Accepting the recommended settings involves accepting "everyone" into my FB life, and I'm not sure I ever intended that. Accepting the "old settings" calls for a response equal in semantic complexity, and I can't remember my old settings anyway. It's like asking me to accept the results of a high school algebra test, 40 years later, without knowing what grade I got at the time, or whether the grade still stands, or whether algebra itself has changed.
I'm making too much of this, I know. But if you were bounced at the door from a nightclub and all your friends got in, you'd brood a little too.
Every now and then I will sign in and see if anything changes. I know, it's just a pass/fail test with no consequences and up til now I've failed. This has been building up... as you owners of Facebook are aware, I've lurked on my friends' pages and posted disagreeable comments a number of times. For all I know I've been unfriended a time or two but life is like that as well.
I remember waiting to get my teeth cleaned about 15 years ago when the receptionist presented me with a form. I said I would take it home and read it but she said I'd have to re-schedule if I couldn't sign it right then. It was a required form and it had to do with..... I believe "privacy" is the term that was used. Right about that time, the term "privacy" was getting its new definition, which I take to mean "universal disclosure."
Anyway, I'll keep trying to get into Facebook and maybe eventually they'll lower the bar to include people who can't remember their old settings or people who don't know what "everyone" means. If you're an "old" FB friend and you're reading this, you now know why the proprietor of moneyblows books and music hasn't been there lately.

Original Master Recordings by Mobile Fidelity

2009-12-15T13:48:00.004-05:00

The 1979 card insert in Mobile Fidelity audiophile albums included the essay "An Audiophile's Dream Come True." Disregarding that this is one of the most abused claims in our fair language, the mfsl folks discuss why this is particularly true for their products.
They trace their lineage in severe and conscientious quality control, limited supply (200,000 or fewer per release), and half-speed mastering using the original stereo master tape.
As they say, "the disc cutter turntable is driven at 16 2/3 rpm, and the master tape is played at exactly one-half the actual recorded speed. When the completed disc is played back at real time (normal 33 1/3 rpm), the program is heard as though nothing unusual had occurred, except that the musical accuracy, clarity and imaging is truly startling!" What follows is detail on headroom and compression/limiting, as well as other refinements to the mastering process.
Equally important, according to mfsl, are the plating of the master, the mother and the stampers. That's why they sent off to JVC to meet their specifications for masterings and test pressings.
Finally, mfsl used "Super Vinyl," for which they make equally "startling" claims. Best of all-- and what makes an mfsl recording worth every penny, is the manifesto of their work:
"As is evidenced, our standards for making records are quite different from those used in the commercial record industry. We are not concerned with mass-media performances or use of our records. We are only concerned with producing an exact sonic replica of the original master tape on vinyl and with how that record will perform in your listening room. The first part requires painstaking attention to minute details to make the master lacquer right; the second part is verified on our own reference equipment which is representative of the finest audio gear available in the world today."
We're thrilled to introduce some of these previously-owned rarities into our store. Just check New Arrival LP Albums.

Tens of thousands of vinyl records

2009-11-17T17:07:00.000-05:00

I saw an old fashioned record feeding frenzy this past weekend, in the Tanglewood neighborhood of Fort Worth, Texas. The estate of a jazz and classical record collector was opened to all comers. Dealers or scouts from around the country must have heard about it, they were swarming all over the records. Still, thousands must have been left. I stopped by on Tuesday and the proprietors of the estate sale told me the remaining records were all donated to the Friends of the Library in a Metroplex town about 20 miles over yonder. Many fine trad, big band, and combo jazz reissues, record club issues, even Woody Herman Mars 45 rpms. Someone swept up all the 78 rpms while I was there, presumably for one "haul-away" price. I picked up a keepsake which has the name and address sticker of one Martin Williams, a Freddie Keppard single which must have once resided in that eminent scholar's collection.

Here's is a rating and review received recently by moneyblows books & music, it's interesting enough to share:

Overall Rating: Excellent

Excellent transaction experience

I have to say (as most reviewers probably do) that the vendor's name threw me when I first saw it. However, I came around quickly when I opened the narrow, sqare package that describes an LP mailer and experienced the contents. "Eydie Swings the Blues" (1957, ABC-Paramount) is a 52-year old LP, and the sound is just gorgeous. Even more impressive is the condition of the album jacket. Amazing that it all kept so well. Everything described in the Gemm entry for this album is true, and delivery was prompt to boot. I hope to do more business with Moneyblows Records in the future.

Take a moment to check out the handmade totes.

Three passings from the world of music: Chris Connor, Ellie Greenwich, Marie Knight

2009-09-03T11:17:00.007-04:00

Music passes in three departures this week. Ellie Greenwich of the Barry & Greenwich songwriting team, was in her late sixties. Among the hits she is known for writing are Chapel of Love and Be My Baby. She was a "Brill Building" writer, known for writing hits that would first appear on records rather in live performance. They were part of a manufacturing chain that would extend wherever there was a radio or record player. Considering it was the 1960s, many of the ears connected to those appliances belonged to teens. People still buy records from that era, and moneyblows books & music still sells them!

Jazz singer Chris Connor passed away at the age of 81. "I Miss You So" from 1956 was one of her biggest hits. Her career began singing with the bands of Claude Thornhill and Stan Kenton. She was considered in the same jazz "school" as Anita O'Day, June Christy, Chet Baker and Julie London. From the time she left the Atlantic label in 1963, her career was eclipsed by rock 'n roll. She sang with romance, feeling, and cool, using little vibrato. The album shown above, He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, is from her Atlantic era.

Finally, Marie Knight was 89 when she passed this week. A gospel superstar since the 1940s, she worked in the rhythm & blues idiom in the 1950s, dabbled in soul in the 1960s, and returned to gospel recording in the 1970s. We have an extremely rare copy of her 1965 release, You Lie So Well / A Little Too Lonely, which has become a Northern Soul classic. It's on the Musicor label and even has similar arrangements to another artist on that label, Gene Pitney.

Soulsville on the cover of Arts & Leisure

2009-08-16T09:20:00.011-04:00

Should there be any doubt that history is written by the survivors, the cover story of the New York Times Arts & Leisure section affirms it today. Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding-- gone. Al Bell, still around. The cover story of the Times is on the occasion of Al Bell, former head of Stax Records, returning to Memphis as chairman of the Memphis Music Foundation, to redeem his own legacy as an executive who took Stax to both great heights and great depths.

In a book called Boogaloo, by Arthur Kempton, the author distinguishes Stax before and after Bell. "Where Jim Stewart [label founder] had seen himself as an exporter of regional crafts, Al Bell envisioned himself at the heart of a complex modern enterprise that manufactured and sold black American popular culture all over the world."

In a Hit Parader story in October 1967, Steve Cropper, a linchpin of the early Stax sound, details the painstaking process of recording which confirms the "regional crafts" phrase.

In our store, we have one of the first releases from the company that became Stax Records, a white label promo by Charles Heinz. The label was then called Satellite, and chances are you've never heard of Charles Heinz.

In its early days Stax was much better at producing than promoting, and the reason we know its artists and sound today is because people such as Jerry Wexler and Al Bell got involved. The price one pays to taste such precious fruits from a far distance, as consumers of radio and records, is that we see and read stories such as the one the Times published today.

The demise of the Stax empire was due to some bad business deals which the Times calls "complicated." It then goes on to portray Mr. Bell as essentially a bystander and a victim in the machinations.

This is what I mean by "history written by the survivors."

Many people more knowledgeable than I am can take issue with the details of this newspaper story, if they wish to. It seems apparent that Bell pushed out the white guys who created the brand, and re-branded the company with one new album, Isaac Hayes' Hot Buttered Soul. After all, the company founders had lost all their backlist masters in a contract with Jerry Wexler, so the status quo that Bell inherited had no "sweat equity." Now the label was to be marketed the same way that the former "Newport Jazz Festival" became the "Kool Jazz Festival"-- as a necessary vice for the late 1960's, early 1970's emerging urban black consumer.

From then on, the Stax Records story becomes a tale of high finance too sordid to repeat here. As the Times points out, Al Bell was acquitted by a jury. But it would be nice for the newspaper to make less of a whitewash when they are attempting to chronicle a history they don't hesitate to call "complicated."

November 8, 1968 One issue of LIFE Magazine, two different covers. Spinning the election?

2009-08-12T13:30:00.014-04:00

As a daily reader of the New York Times, I’ve watched the home delivery issue get thinner and thinner, while at the same time the paper’s news stories play up conflict throughout the world. It is as if the imploding world of the mainstream media needs the planet itself to reflect its disarray. One could cynically argue that if the advertisers would come back to the print media and huckster their goods again, the world might suddenly seem a quieter place.

But desperation makes strange bedfellows. And so the front page of the New York Times Wednesday August 12, 2009, fans the flames by showing a thug waving a piece of paper, Joe McCarthy like, at Senator Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania.

At moneyblows books and music, we are constantly reminded of nothing new under the sun. By re-arranging the detritus of the 20th century—books, vinyl records, magazines, and other things—we daily affirm that tired maxim of “history repeats itself.”

From the 1930s onward, LIFE Magazine was a flagship of the Time-Life media empire, a weekly magazine with dramatic photographs that drove home many world events in dramatic pictorials. They really excelled during wars, especially with photographers such as Larry Burrows who risked life and limb--- and died in 1971 covering the war in Laos for the magazine.

But, by 1971, LIFE Magazine was a dead man walking. The phrase wasn’t used, but “pull the plug on grandma” was the thinking of its owners, and morale within the magazine’s ivory towers had never been lower.

During the election campaign of 1968— which stands as a major news year in American history— Republicans were doing the same thing they are doing now, attempting to disrupt the efforts of their opposing party. They were not going to let LBJ’s administration end the Vietnam War, and must have been worried (as they are now about Obama’s health care plan) that circumstances might favor the incumbents. They had one strong weapon: the Republican nominee for President, who would use the turmoil to turn the election in his favor.

In its issue of October 11, 1968, the failing LIFE magazine cast its lot with the man who would later disgrace the Office of the Presidency. The writer Brock Brower wrote an article headlined “A Vision of Victory at Last within Reach.” It was a happy talk with Nixon announcing his victory in advance, with nary a hint of how he was playing his “future president” card with foreign governments.

As Anna Chennault, Henry Kissinger, and John Mitchell worked behind the scenes to complicate LBJ’s efforts, the Paris peace talks were orchestrated to fail, and South Vietnamese president Thieu pulled out of the bombing halt talks. LBJ, reeling from accusations that he was trying to halt the bombing to win the election for Vice President Hubert Humphrey, realized he could not end the war while he was President. His successor Nixon publicly took the high ground while he set up the Democrats for failure.

All this is ancient history by now, until we discovered the two issues of LIFE Magazine that preceded and succeeded the election of Nixon. In the victory issue of November 15th, LIFE reported that on October 30th, the Thieu government of South Vietnam had balked at the peace talks, even though it had approved them the day before. An article called “The Bomb Halt Decision” ends with a surreal photo of three television screen close-ups on LBJ announcing the bombing halt. If a picture is worth a thousand words, these are several thousand words on the President’s Halloween speech announcing a halt to the bombing in North Vietnam. Reading the “fine print” of the article though, the reader realizes that the picture is showing an advance videotape of a speech that was never delivered. The bombing was halted, but without the cooperation of Thieu, who had been negotiating secretly with the incoming Nixon administration. American citizens would never hear the President’s announcement speech. If this is any indication how the desperate media makes its own news, we roll back one week to the issue of November 8.

We have two different LIFE Magazines with that cover date. Orangutan. And Tron.

The issues may be substantially the same, but the covers and contents pages are different in the two issues here at Moneyblows Books & Music. A 12 page photo essay by one of Life’s star photojournalists, Larry Burrows, featured a 12-year old Vietnamese “girl named Tron” who lost the lower half of her right leg to American helicopter fire. Showing the limitations of weekly journalism, the lede (or lead paragraph) of Vol. 65, No. 19 was slightly different in each issue.

In one, it read, “The U.S. and North Vietnam last week came to an agreement. Not much later, Americans went to the polls to choose a President.”

In the other issue, it said, “The U.S. agreed last week to halt all bombing of North Vietnam. Not much later, Americans went to the polls to choose a President.”

Although this article was written in the past tense, the magazine of course was prepared and distributed before the election. If you have a passing interest in deadline journalism, you know that shelf life of an article is important, so much so that a lead paragraph is designed not to be outdated if possible. And this is a tall order in weekly journalism.

Don’t know if there was a “stop the presses” or if there may be other versions of this article out there, but we have these two. Both are dated November 8, 1968.

It’s probably fair to assume that the more detailed lede came later, e.g. “The U.S. agreed last week to halt all bombing of North Vietnam.” It also hints at the fact that South Vietnam was not part of this agreement. But due to classification of documents, it would be years before Americans would discover the sickening reality that the President they’d just elected, and thought would take office in January, had already taken over foreign policy, by negotiating with South Vietnam as a candidate and promising them favors when he was in the White House.

Now we turn to the table of contents blurbs of the two issues. In the one we are calling “earlier”, the Tron story is blurbed, “The Hope of Peace: As statesmen bargain, a girl named Tron in a Vietnamese village called Andien tries to readjust to the loss of her leg.”

In the issue with the more detailed story lede, the blurb reads: “The Edge of Peace: As the U.S. and North Vietnam reach agreement, a girl named Tron….”

From the “hope of peace” to the “edge of peace”, hours or days between them, a lot was going on behind the scenes. And yet, no peace was in sight as American casualties in southeast Asia would continue to mount.

It was not enough for the desperate editors of LIFE Magazine to influence their story spin while failing to cover what was truly going on behind the scenes. They also changed the covers of the two magazine issues with the same cover date. In what we think is the earlier printing, the magazine cover shows a zoo orangutan inert and morose, with the headline: “New knowledge about wildlife reveals that Zoos Drive Animals Psycho.” It was typical of LIFE Magazine to feature articles about nature, social mores, and entertainment, in addition to politics. Knowing far in advance that this was the issue coming out before the election, I suspect this cover was prepared in advance as the “neutral” cover while the Time-Life editors and owners tried to come up with something more immortal than an inert and morose orangutan.

In fact, their second cover also featured a zoo animal—the human kind. On its own, it’s a wrenching story and one of many incredible spreads by the late photojournalist Larry Burrows. The headline read “As the bombing stops—This Girl Tron. Nguyen Thi Tron, 12, caught in the war, watches her new wooden leg being made.”

From orangutan to Tron is a speechless journey that reinforces the sad cynicism and desperate plight of a dying magazine, to wrench emotion from a still photograph as the competition, television, stole all its advertisers. Yes, it was a picture magazine, not designed for nuance. The Time-Life organization would show how it could play both sides of the fence, announcing the bombing halt while giving Nixon a poster girl for continuing the war. Typically perhaps of the profession, they cheapened themselves by using sentimentality in the service of warmongering.

America in 1968. Two covers of the same magazine. A war we eventually lost big time. Woodstock still to come.

Cronkite shills for Columbia Records

2009-07-20T09:18:00.004-04:00

Walter Cronkite was known as a news reader and reporter, rather than commentator. We also have a record of him flacking for Columbia Records in 1958. It's on an album produced by the Columbia Records Public Relations Department, called "Hear It Now On LP: The Story of the First LP Decade on Columbia Records."

Having invented the Long Playing record, Columbia celebrated its 10th anniversary with this mighty 33 1/3 rpm disc, by making this narrative anthology hosted by another inventor, the "inventor" of the news anchor, Walter Cronkite. The 12-in. record album contains popular and classical excerpts from 1948's Oscar Levant performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (Ormandy and Philadelphia Orchestra), all the way to 1957's Firebird Suite (Stravinsky) conducted by Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic.

This record was likely given out in limited quantities and never issued to the general public. It also includes the popular side of Columbia, from the earliest original cast albums of "Kiss Me, Kate" and "South Pacific" down to 1957 and the then-current stable of artists such as Johnny Mathis, Ray Conniff, Les Elgart and Erroll Garner. Cronkite's classic reading of the continuity script has the familiar ring of history in the making.

2009-07-01T10:10:00.007-04:00

With New Haven officialdom in the news recently-- because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision-- it seems apt to revisit another notorious instance of uniformed New Haven getting in the news, on December 12, 1967.

According to an article in the April 12, 1968 edition of Life Magazine,a singer/poet was in the dressing room before his concert, and he and a girl decided to adjourn elsewhere. As the singer/poet told his audience later during the concert, "And we wanted some privacy / And so we went into this shower-room / We weren't doing anything, you know, / just standing there and talking. / And then this little man came in there, / This little man, in a little blue suit / And a little blue cap, /And he said, 'Whatcha doin' there?' / 'Nothin'./ But he didn't go 'way, / He stood there / And then he reached 'round behind him / And he brought out this little black can of somethin' / Looked like shaving cream, / And then he / Sprayed it in my eyes. / I was blinded for about 30 minutes..."

After that, spoken over a drumbeat (like another Morrison sometimes did), the singer resumed his song, the famous blues tune "Back Door Man." But in the concert hall, the lights came on. Bandmate Ray Manzarek whispered to Morrison to ask the audience if it wanted them to keep playing. He did, and the response left no doubt. Quoting one of his famous songs, "When the Music's Over," the singer said "Turn out the lights!"

Suddenly, Lt. James P. Kelly, head of the New Haven Police Department's Youth Division, came on stage and arrested the singer. The singer pointed his microphone at the officer and said, "Say your thing, man."

The microphone was snatched from his hand, and more policemen rushed the stage. A well known New York Times photographer, Tim Page, was pushed into the street while taking pictures of some arrests, and he was then arrested himself, along with Yvonne Chabrier, a Life Magazine reporter, and Michael Zwerin, jazz critic for the Village Voice. In addition, according to the article, "an unknown number of teen-agers were hauled off."

Jim Morrison New Haven arrest

If you'd like more information on the band that caused this ruckus, search "The Doors" here or here. To see some pictures and the arrest documents, click on the link above: "Jim Morrison New Haven arrest."

MySpace.com Blogs - paul boll MySpace Blog

2009-06-29T09:25:00.001-04:00

MySpace.com Blogs - paul boll MySpace Blog

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Hear Hear! Wear Wear!

2009-06-19T19:29:00.006-04:00

These shirts are all 100 percent cotton and feature bands such as the Beatles, Willie Nelson, Nirvana, Johnny Cash, Bob Marley, Family Guy, Peanuts, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd.
They're high quality rock'n roll t-shirts, by companies such as Apple Corps, Zion Rootswear, Fruit of the Loom, Alstyne, Anvil Knitwear, Hanes Heavyweight and more.

For Bike Weekers stuck at the red light, Look in the Window! These great shirts are on display at Harlan Wolfe's Record Shop, 6 Main St., Conway Village, NH, 03818. That's right on the corner of Washington and Main, which is also the intersection of Rte. 16 and 153 enroute to the White Mountains.

Customers at Harlan Wolfe Music in Conway Village are getting first crack at these limited availability shirts this weekend, in dual celebration of Vinyl Saturday and Bike Week in New Hampshire.moneyblows books & music.

Heard a great quote from a twenty-something yesterday: "If you're gonna mess up your credit, might as well do it while you're young, 'cause there's time to fix it."

Some things never change, such as J.D. Salinger's protective efforts over a half century to keep Holden Caulfield, protagonist of Catcher In The Rye, from being copied. This time, and I'm putting my own spin on this, his lawyers say his copyright includes the right to cryogenically preserve Caulfield the way he originally was at the end of the novel. The only thing different then was, Caulfield wasn't famous yet when Salinger was just finishing his novel. But if Salinger says he's the same as he ever was, doesn't he have that right? Why should anybody piggyback on J.D. Salinger? It's just not nice. And, does anyone remember "The Wind Done Gone," the sequel to "Gone With The Wind."?

R.I.P. Sam Butera

2009-06-05T08:35:00.007-04:00

In the late 1990s I realized a dream of many years, to see Sam Butera. The event could not have been better: he was the "headliner" at St. Anthony's Feast in Boston's Northend.

To me, Sam Butera is among the greatest of all saxophonists. His mastery of the instrument predated and foreshadowed rock 'n roll, and though he was not a jazz player by reputation, his improvisational skills put him up there with Sonny Rollins. Seeing him jump, jive and wail with mad ferocity, at an Italian street festival in the twilight of his career, put me beyond words.

He is reported to have passed away in Las Vegas at age 81, on Wednesday, June 3, 2009.

Sam Butera is best known for his work with Louis Prima, and he is the first saxophonist to have attained fame as a sidekick. Let's not underestimate this achievement. Louis Prima and Keely Smith, who paved the way for Sonny & Cher, both had a high level of musicianship which is underrated today. Prima was as good as Louis Armstrong but used his skills differently, and unlike Armstrong, had no problem sharing the spotlight. Prima and Smith's dynamic 1950s and 1960s stage show would have been quite different without Sam Butera, who did the arrangements, wrote some songs, and stepped in to sing from time to time. But most often, he played voluminous honking tenor sax solos. He did so with absolute virtuosity, recalling the technique of Earl Bostic and Al Gallodoro, the soul of King Curtis, the lyricism of Vido Musso, and the raw professionalism of Joe Houston and Illinois Jacquet. He could command a stage all by himself, having grown up in an era of tenor sax stars. The banter between him and Louis Prima foreshadowed that in the E Street Band between Bruce Springsteen and Clarence Clemons.

He joined Louis Prima in 1954 to play at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas, and when Prima fell into a coma in 1975, he fronted his own band. Valiantly, he adapted his style to the pop music of the 1960s and 1970s, and though the instrumental backgrounds of the 1970s recordings are outdated now, Sam Butera's playing was always for the ages.

Most people don't know the influence of Sam Butera. If you remember David Lee Roth doing the medley of "Just a Gigolo" and "I Ain't Got Nobody" in the 1980s, you are hearing an arrangement originated by Sam Butera. Butera's signature arrangement was held in such respect in his adopted hometown of Las Vegas, that no other band would play it there. Yet it was copied by countless artists, including Delbert McClinton in his early garage band The Straightjackets. His arrangement of "Jump, Jive and Wail" was revived by the Stray Cats and the Cherry Poppin' Daddies and inspired those bands to create a swing dance revival in the 1980s.

It is impossible to listen to Sam Butera play a ballad without thinking of the great Italian American heritage (shared by Prima), a heritage which is often overshadowed in discussions of New Orleans jazz. New Orleans was their hometown, and the invention of jazz in New Orleans is as much a product of Italian American bandsmen, as it is an African-American tradition. Butera once told the story of his mother, an Italian immigrant who got off the boat in Argentina and then promptly walked back up the gangplank and back on the boat.

"Wrong America," she said.

Digging Up Dirt

2009-06-02T20:18:00.008-04:00

The Ford plant at Willow Run, now the GM transmission plant being closed as part of the reorganization of General Motors, was initially built to assemble B24 bombers for World War II. The federal government bought out farms all around the area to make room for the Ford plant.

Thousands of people came looking for jobs, seriously taxing the resources of Ypsilanti. They pitched tents, slept in their cars, built wood and tin shacks, and a few even found rooms and apartments in Ypsilanti itself. The peak of employment for Willow Run was June 1943, with 42,000 plus workers.

Here are a couple of cool tales from the time:

#1
In the front of the Spencer Schoolyard stands a marker which represents the graves of all those buried in the Willow Run cemetery until October 1941. The graves were dug up and replaced with one marker.

In the words of a school board member at the time (name of Simmonds): “I knew they were doing all the construction over at the Bomber Plant, and that meant moving around a lot of dirt. It occurred to me,” said Mr. Simmonds with a telling smile, “that if I could just get to see Mr. Henry Ford himself, maybe he would let us have some of that dirt they were digging at the plant.”

The school board had obtained permission to remove the old weatherbeaten grave markers and now all they had was a pile of dirt. Mr. Simmonds persisted until he met Henry Ford, and told him about the “dirt we needed to level off that old cemetery for our schoolyard.” Ford instructed Harry Bennett, his concierge for all things unpleasant, to take care of this. “Sure enough," as Mr.Simmonds told Marion F. Wilson for a 1956 book, "the next day several loads of dirt were hauled over and dumped on the old cemetery.” They wouldn’t level it though, not without personal instructions from Harry Bennett. Worried about zombies?

#2
In the center ring of the world's largest industrial operation of the time,were ten "little people." From their previous jobs in the entertainment world, they worked through the roar of rivets and hammering of giant machine presses. They were the midgets of Willow Run. Highly specialized and highly respected by the other employees, the midgets would wedge their way into a B-24 wing tip to buck rivets and insulate fuel cells. Or they might inspect a space so tight that no other inspector could get in there. It took a midget to crawl into a wing or fuel tank to do this dangerous work.

Ford had a rule that everyone must punch their own time card, so at the beginning and end of their shift you could see the midgets being lifted by their larger buddies to punch in and out.

What about the ghosts of Willow Run, and where did the midgets go to work next? Now we know the real cover-up behind the so-called "bankruptcy" of General Motors.

This copy of Life Magazine contains a story about the first closing of Willow Run at the end of World War II, before it became a GM transmission plant.

Our bookstore has plenty of General Motors lore Browse from this page :

Comeback: The Fall & Rise of the American Automobile Industry (ISBN: 0671792148 / 0-671-79214-8)
Simon & Schuster, NYC, 1994. Hard Cover. Book Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. First Printing. Illustrated by B/W photographs.

American Heritage -- August 1973
NYC: American Heritage Publishing Co. 1973, 1973. Hard Cover. Book Condition: Very Good. Vol, XXIV, No. 5. Cover browned. Articles on: Harriet Beecher Stowe; William Durant, the founder of General Motors; Leslie Wilcox's paintings of ships; Bernard DeVoto; Sod Houses; The burning of Chambersburg, PA; "In This Proud Land"-- book selection; Men of the Revolution-- Cornwallis; P.T. Barnum's elephant Jumbo; Battles of the Revolution-- Trenton.

Collision Course: Inside the Battle for General Motors (ISBN: 9781559723138)
Maynard, Micheline
New York City: Birch Lane Press, 1995, 1995. Hard Cover. Book Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. First Edition.

Paradise Lost: The decline of the auto-industrial age (ISBN: 9780394460321)
Rothschild, Emma
NYC: Random House, 1973, 1973. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good-. DJ shelf worn with 2 small tears. An exposition of the U.S. auto industry in the early 70's-problems with customers, workers, shareholders, and competition. The author concentrates on General Motors.

Business and Economic History: Second Series, Volume 18, 1989
Hausman, William J., editor
Williamsburg: Business History Conference, 1989, 1989. Trade Paperback. Book Condition: Very Good. Dissertations and papers from the 35th annual meeting of the Business History Conference. Topics include: Testing the F-4 Phantom II; The Origins of the Brazilian Automative Industry; Eli Lilly and Company, 1876-1948; Rowntree and Market Strategy, 1897-1939; Lessons from the Struggle between Ford and General Motors durings the 1920s and 1930s; Marketing at Burlington Industries, 1923-1962; The Inward Thrust of Institutional Advertising: General Electric and General Motors in the 1920s; Clock, Watch and Typewriter Manufacturing in the 19th Century; Marketing the Women's Journals, 1973-1900; Belgian Domestic Steel Cartels and the Re-Rollers, 1880-1920; The Gilbreths and the Manufacture and Marketing of Motion Study, 1908-1924. 248 pp. Slight edgewear.

The Company and The Union
Serrin, William
NYC: Knopf, 1973, 1973. Hard Cover. Very Good-/Good+. First Edition. ISBN:0394461916. 308+ pgs. Cover faded, prev. owner's stamped name on title page, dj slightly soiled and worn on edges. The inside story of the 1972 strike by the UAW at General Motors and how the UAW has accommodated the large car companies.

The Man who Discovered Quality: How W. Edwards Deming Brought the Quality Revolution to America--The stories of Ford, Xerox, & General Motors (ISBN: 9780812917741)
Gabor, Andrea
Times Books, NYC, 1990. Hard Cover. Book Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. First Edition. An account of Deming's principles and visions concerning quality control by following the 14 points. 326 pp, indexed. Small scuffed/worn area on side of page ends.

Life Magazine June 17, 1957 -- Cover: Mayflower II
Time, Inc., Chicago, 1957. Magazine. Book Condition: Very Good-. Includes: Photos of Greenwich, Conn. teens playing 'Living Droodles'; Mayflower II recreates historic voyage; Whooping cranes hatch at Audubon Park Zoo; New pill for diabetics could replace insulin shot; Michael Redgrave in Heublein ad; Dacron fashions - photographed on Dupont properrties; The reigning Royalty of Europe, Part 1 -- In a democratic era, they survive by serving it -- Britain, Holland, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Greece; Supreme Court finds du Pont's link to General Motors illegal; GI William Girard to be tried by Japanese court for shooting; Father-son actors Ed Wynn and Keenan Wynn; Edward Nixon marries Gay Lynn Woods. Edgewear, covers are worn, back cover has corner torn off at lower spine.

Homage to William H. Youngren, January 1989 New Yorker, p. 105

2009-05-28T14:31:00.007-04:00

This past year we marked the two-hundredth anniversary of the death of Dewey Bright, the most prolific, probably the most gifted, and in his own time the most famous of Shiny Bright's sons. The occasion has been observed in a number of ways. A new thematic catalog of Bright's works, compiled by Thaxter Broyan, will be published this spring by Yela University Press, superseding Alfred Whatthen's 3004 catalogue. (Though Watthen's catalogue is long outdated, its computer source code is still used to identify the file extensions of Bright's mp3s (which, although they sound like mp3s of Bright's period, are available only in privately distributed (though free) source code using Watthen's extensions.)

Moth & Flame publishers has brought out a collection of essays by various hands, Bright according to the not so Bright, as recently as last fall. Equally important are the many new recordings that have appeared on surgical chip, especially an excellent 10k gigabyte series sold as a temporary implant. There is a great need for first-rate performances of Bright's large and varied oeuvre. His reputation has had its ups and downs, there has never been a complete clone or vocdot edition of his music (though Broyan has been working on one), and his historical position and significance have always been something of a mystery.

Born at Hartford in 1951, Bright (as I shall call him here) was trained in music by the radio and began to compose at an early age. But he also had a far more extensive formal education than most 20th century musicians; after playing sax for tips in blues clubs he entered a graduate program in clarinet performance, receiving a master's degree and an invitation to go back from whence he came. An excellent sight reader but lacking social skills, he became interested in the clarinet as a solo instrument, in order to keep away the nosy and curious. In the early 21st century he published the two volumes of his Ya nevah heard this (Don't let your ears mess up the rest of your body), one of the most important and informative 21st century musical treatises. When Bright went dark, in 2051, an LE edition of the surgical transplant of the two volumes reached the best seller list in a quick spurt and then fell into history. Occasional vocdot issues of scattered songs seem to bubble up about as regularly as Bright tributes held sporadically at several small colleges.

For the most part, however, in the decades following 2051, his reputation swiftly declined. The Permantics' discovery, about 2079, of the music of Shiny Bright, and with it the majesty and intellectual density of thought sampling, suddenly made almost all the music between his time and theirs seem superficial. Even Bob Dylan and Eminem lost stature, and came to be valued mainly for having prepared the way for Marsalis and the birth of historiographism. When, in the first decades of last century, Dewey Bright at last regained some stature of his own, it was, in turn, as the composer who had prepared the way for them as such rather than the other way around.

What does all this wealth of music add up to? Where,finally, in our view of 21st century music does Dewey Bright belong? No clear, comprehensive answer is as yet possible. The absence of a complete edition of his works, and of first-rate live and recorded performances, has long constituted an insuperable obstacle to any such general evaluation. What the world needs now is an actual compact disc which was not posthumous when it was made, and it is possible that one has been found. More on this to come.

2009-05-15T21:43:00.003-04:00

Our experience in selling books in an online community, began with Record Manager and Dick Weatherford's Interloc bulletin board, matching dealer wants with offers. Shortly thereafter, browser based bookselling and record selling became a pioneering effort with Moneyblows Books & Music. For record marketing, we turned to gemm and have listed with them for over a decade.
GEMM is a great marketplace, overstocked with some things, understocked with others. If you're looking for records, don't overlook GEMM.

The vinyl mystery of bossa nova history

2009-05-05T11:45:00.005-04:00

Speaking with a customer the other day, I was reminded of a mystery in the history of bossa nova vinyl. What's the earliest edition of Joao Gilberto's Chega de Saudade? What's the deciding factor? Is it the color of the label, the color of the printing on the back side of the sleeve? Is it whether the sleeve is soft, encased in plastic, or cardboard like the typical album sleeves in America?

Some labels may be blue, some may be bright green and white, others greenish gray. There may be as many as 4 jacket variants and 3 label variants.

The customer told us of a huge record store in Rio de Janeiro, called Modern Sound, with a basement full of LPs and a clerk named Elvis. Though the customer speaks fluent Portuguese, he has a difficult time solving this mystery of bossa nova history. Communications with Modern Sound is only by telephone; they do not allow email contact with employees. We welcome comments by those with knowledge of this subject!

2009-04-17T08:55:00.004-04:00

Much of the media coverage I have seen equates the health of the banks with the health of our economy. There seems to be little disagreement on this point. Hence, a wonderful time for a poem such as this one:

With Usura

With usura hath no man a house of good stone

each block cut smooth and well fitting

that design might cover their face,

with usura

hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall

harpes et luthes

or where virgin receiveth message

and halo projects from incision

with usura

seeth no man Gonzaga his heirs and his concubines

no picture is made to endure nor to live with

but it is made to sell and sell quickly

with usura, sin against nature

is thy bread ever more of stale rags

is thy bread dry as paper,

with no mountain wheat, no strong flour

with usura the line grows thick

with usura is no clear demarcation

and no man can find site for his dwelling.

Stone cutter is kept from his stone

weaver is kept from his loom

WITH USURA

wool comes not to market

sheep bringeth no gain with usura

Usura is a murrain, usura

blunteth the needle in the maid's hand

and stoppeth the spinner's cunning. Pietro Lombardo

came not by usura

Duccio came not by usura

nor Pier della Francesca; Zuan Bellin' not by usura

nor was 'La Calunnia" painted.

Came not by usura Angelico; came not Ambrogio, Praedis,

Came no church of cut stone signed: Adamo me fecit.

Not by usura St. Trophime

Not by usura Saint Hilaire,

Usura rusteth the chisel

It rusteth the craft and the craftsman

It gnaweth the thread in the loom

None learneth to weave gold in her pattern;

Azure hath a canker by usura; cramoisi is unbroidered

Emerald findeth no Memling

Usura slayeth the child in the womb

It stayeth the young man's courting

It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth

between the young bride and her bridegroom

CONTRA NATURAM

They have brought whores for Eleusis

Corpses are set to banquet

at behest of usura.

I found this poem to be descriptive of what banks do. Though it is a poem, and may be taken by some in the context of the author's politics, it warns of things that seem to have happened!

Eddie Daniels on clarinet

2009-04-07T13:10:00.003-04:00

Reading back to an interview given by Eddie Daniels, to the LeBlanc Bell, in the summer of 1993, I share some of his comments quoted by Tom Ridenour:

"I wanted to play my own music, music from my heart--and the voice that came from my heart was the clarinet. It has such subtlety and warmth, a natural sound. I'ts the instrument that I most connect with, the instrument that makes me feel alive...it truly excites me when young people hear this "primitive" acoustic instrument and prefer it to electronic ones. People are confronted with technology all the time, but the clarinet is such an earthy thing-- a piece of tree with holes in it!"

"All my training was classical, no jazz at all. This may not be true for all people, but for me, jazz is not something that can be learned in a classroom; you learn it by listening and doing it."

"Music saved my life by giving me a goal to work toward. Constantly having the beauty of music in front of me inspired me. Things weren't always great at home, and my escape was to practice. If not for music, I might have been an outcast--who knows?--in jail. Music gives you an inroad to yourself."

If you have never been to jazz.com you are in for a treat. Just as Barney Google could never have known his last name would become the "smith" or "jones" of the internet, who could guess a site named "jazz.com" could ever live up to its name? Thanks to its estimable editor Ted Gioia, it surely does. Check it out.

2009-01-20T12:53:00.005-05:00

On this day when the world of celebrity merges with the world of government, we visit the life of another unlikely personage who brought happiness-- however fleeting-- to many.

Leo Ezekiel Mannes was born Oct. 10, 1911, in San Francisco, on a hill. The latter detail would follow him through his career and the city of birth would mean nothing at all.

His father was an accomplished violinist. The family moved to Los Angeles, where as a young man he performed in a tent show. During the 1920's he began hanging around the radio station KPMC, where he did some children's shows and performed with a jazz trio.

The radio station wanted to lasso the rural folks who, fleeing the Dust Bowl, had landed in California. So it was that one day, the station manager, Glen Rice, excitedly broke into regular programming to tell a most unusual story. He said that as he was riding in the hills in Malibu, he had lost his way and by chance, stumbled upon a small village of hill folk who had been out of touch with civilization for 100 years. They lived in log cabins, had a blacksmith shop, and lived as people did in the 18th century.

Day by day, the radio station disclosed more pertinent facts, such as the tidbit that the hill people were directly descended from Daniel Boone. On April 6, 1930, some of the "hill people" showed up at the radio station studio on mules. Their leader was Zeke Craddock.

Zeke Craddock was Leo Ezekiel Mannes, and the whole thing was a stunt out of his busy imagination as a radio promotion man. It was so successful that crowds of radio listeners were soon camping outside the radio station in the hopes of following the "hillbillies" home to their secluded hideaway. Zeke Craddock and his actors outwitted the fans by disguising themselves in coats and ties and they stole away undetected. The ersatz bumpkins were periodically trotted out to large crowds at Grauman's Chinese Theater and other radio promotion events.

"Zeke" changed his pseudonym from " Craddock" to "Manners" and his gang of miscreants broke up into three different musical groups. Zeke Manners and one of his pals, Elton Britt, said to have been the world's highest yodeler, set off for New York City in a Model A. Upon arriving they sang at radio stations, theaters and saloons and street corners.

Not every listener was enthralled. Mr. Manners once rather ruefully recalled being given $2 to stop singing in a hotel bar.

Not long after, the group got a spot on "The Rudy Vallee Radio Show" and soon were appearing on Fred Allen's show. For awhile, Mr. Manners was one of the Three Links of Sausage, with their sponsor being Armour & Company, the meatpacker.

When the sponsorship expired, the group tried being the Murray Hill Billies in reference to that Manhattan neighborhood. The name flopped. Their success came as Zeke Manners and His Gang. In 1935 they went to London and performed for the royal family.

In 1943, Mr. Manners joined the Army, serving with the Army Air Forces' motion picture unit. He appeared in "Winged Victory," Moss Hart's musical celebrating the Air Forces.

After the war, Zeke Manners shuttled between the East and West coasts. From 1950 to 1952, he was the host of one of television's earlies talk shows, on Channel 7, WJZ, which is now WABC. The show was a two-hour free-for-all. Eddie Cantor would pop in; Virginia Graham got her start as a television host by serving as Zeke's sidekick.

Back in Los Angeles, he became the nation's first cross-country radio disc jockey on the ABC network, according to a Newsweek magazine of the time. He managed this (echoes of Tom Joyner's early career) by exploiting the time differences. He would creep out of bed at 3:30 a.m. At 4:30 a.m. he would do a 45-minute show for East Coast audiences. An hour later, he would do another show for audiences in the Rocky Mountain time zone, etc., until the cycle finally ended at 7:45 a.m. Pacific Time.

In his "hill billy" persona, he banged out tunes on the accordion, piano and organ, often backed up by ABC's janitors clanking pails. His character was something between a cowpoke just off the Chisholm Trail and Li'l Abner, albeit one who happened to live in a Manhattan penthouse with a valet.

Times changed and so did Zeke. In the mid-1950s he worked as a rock 'n roll disc jockey. In the 1960s he appeared in Las Vegas with a bluegrass group. He can be spotted in a 1985 movie, directed by his nephew Albert Brooks. The movie was "Lost in America" and he was one of a couple living in a trailer park.

All his life, he wrote songs. He wrote "The Pennsylvania Polka" with Lester Lee, which was introduced by the Andrews Sisters in 1942, and was included eight times over in the 1993 movie "Groundhog Day."

His song "Fat Man Blues," a collaboration with William G. Cahan, a surgeon, included the line, "All this eatin' is defeatin' your chance / Of ever getting any good romance."

The Byrds recorded a song he wrote about the initial moon landing, "Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins."

Another of his original band names, from the 1920s, was the "Beverly Hill Billies." He was the only surviving member of that group when the television show of the same name appeared in the 1960s.

By that time, he had long been known as the "Jewish Hillbilly." So, when he sued the television show for stealing his name, he had no trouble proving it was his. After all, he was Jewish. And, if you recall, he had been born on a hill.

He was made musical director of the television show. When the show ended, he developed a nightclub act for himself and the show's star, Buddy Ebsen, which appeared in Las Vegas and elsewhere.

His deathbed request, dutifully fulfilled by his family, was to be buried "as a hillbilly." He was dressed for the hereafter in a baseball "gimme" cap celebrating the Spice Girls, red suspenders, and purple shades from the 99-cent store. A cigar was placed in his pocket.

So, though you may never have heard of Zeke Manners, take heart.

2008-12-04T08:55:00.006-05:00

Ten years after she began singing professionally, in a West Coast production of "Finian's Rainbow," a very different Odetta Holmes reached a career "tipping point" in New York with with a solo concert at Carnegie Hall, accompanied only by Bill Lee on bass, on April 8, 1960. The album from that concert, Odetta at Carnegie Hall, is a bona fide classic in the history of folk music, Vanguard VRS 9076. The concert was a benefit for the Church of the Master, Reverend James H. Robinson, Minister, whose choir, directed by Theodore R. Stent, M.D., was known not only for spirituals but for performances of difficult classics such as the Brahms Requiem. At the time of this recording, the popularization of folk music was in the hands of a few people who had recognized its mass market potential. One of them was Odetta's, and later Bob Dylan's, manager, Albert B. Grossman. Another was Harold Leventhal, with whom I had the pleasure of visiting, in his midtown Manhattan office in the mid-1990s. Mr. Leventhal recorded the concert featured on this vinyl album, which we have one copy of here at moneyblows books & music.
Odetta's obituary appears in today's New York Times. She was a great singer, influencing everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Tracey Chapman.
If you are in the Durham, NH area this Saturday morning, we are having a barn sale featuring record albums for about $2, all genres. Here's a link to the craigslist ad. If you go to our home page, the address is published at the top.
The folk music movement, for all its faults, blanketed the growing American middle class and spoke deeply to a select few who spearheaded the civil rights movement, the peace movement, and other bastions of social justice. Almost fifty years later, our country has scarcely progressed except in small pockets of influence. Odetta had hoped to perform at Barack Obama's inauguration. He will have to do with someone else. Presidents have no shortage of people who can help them. Some things never change.

2008-12-03T19:03:00.005-05:00

What have we here then? Oh, just a little fun inspired by a site sent to me by a reader. Check it out: http://www.sleeveface.com While we're doing this, another link I'd like to share with you, it's the vinyl search for amazon.com. Finally, they have a page you can search vinyl records from and it works pretty good. If you try to search for vinyl from any other amazon search page, it's almost futile. But this link will give you vinyl almost every time: Try amazon vinyl search.

Finally, how about one more link? We're going to sell some vinyl in the barn this weekend, so for more details check out our craigslist ad. Let me know if you need directions to the barn. We'll be offering albums, singles, 78s, you name it, most for $2 apiece. Probably some good sleeveface fodder!

2008-12-01T10:18:00.005-05:00

I saw an ad in the New York Times that said "old bestsellers are affordable first editions." The advertiser was offering less than a half dozen "old bestsellers" for $50. This is a blatant deception, clever as it is. The books they refer to as "old bestsellers" had first editions numbering in the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands. They are by reputable and popular authors and are easily available online for 99 cents or less.
It's hard to give a sucker an even break, so I won't try.... other than to comment: clearly shoppers are upset to the point of killing store employees in a mad rush to find a "bargain." They don't stop to think that even the "bargain" may be vastly overpriced. Yes, some kind of unspoken covenant about shopping has been forever broken. Yes, the internet (initially a project of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency) had something to do with this. But, shopping really turned into a religion about the time the "consumer" movement gained traction back in the 1960s. As the movement grew--- industry and government regulation, "consumer"-directed advertising ("citi never sleeps" etc, which once referred to early ATMs)-- a notion formed, that it was not nice to exploit consumers with all their buying power. The effect of the movement has basically been opposite. Intelligent consumers have turned into chumps, to the extent they will knock over a Wal*Mart temp employee on their way to buy something that they don't understand the value of.
There was a variation on the "consumer" movement that started building in the early 1970s, the medical version of it was called HMO or PPO, etc. This was the idea that the consumer had the right to harness America's vast health care assets not just to cure problems, but also prevent them. Gee, guess what happened? Screwed again. Guerilla shopping didn't come out of nowhere. People are mad. Dine 'n dash is considered a game. Let's face it, if a restaurant operated like a hospital ER, you'd be paying for that meal the rest of your life. Unless you were flat broke when you got there, without a pot to piss in. Of course, the restaurant wouldn't serve you but the hospital would, the ER has to, the government says so. They pay the bill so the hospital won't kill you, at least not that day.
I digress. Where I'm going with this is, you're being overcharged, OK? You can't do much about it. At moneyblows books and music we have sold online since 1997. Almost everything we have is hard to find elsewhere. But, thanks to the internet, even hard to find stuff is easy to find. So, we have to price appropriately. We are still in business because we are self financed. Our prices reflect reality because our existence is month to month and a bank doesn't own us. There's no merit or virtue in this, other than, you can look for something, find it and buy it, at our store, without any more fear than any other transaction, and maybe even less, since we don't have a line of angry people outside.
Hey, what else can I say except, Shop Here! Or , if you want to find us on amazon, or abebooks, or gemm, or netsoundsmusic, or musicstack, or choosebooks, or biblio, or zvab, just ask and we will send you to the right place. If you want to use a search engine to find us, just type moneyblows. You will find us out there. You may even find some other funny stuff which we have no control over. People like to fantasize about money blowing in the wind. But let me tell you, in the last 11 years, people have bought stuff from us that is now worth more than they paid. We believe in collectible books and music and have plenty of it ourselves that you'll never see offered for sale. OK, I've rambled on long enough. C'mon in and enjoy the selection!

Money At Rest

2008-11-23T11:18:00.003-05:00

We must do our part in lowering prices, so we have an unbelievable coupon deal for customers from today (Nov. 23rd) until the end of December 2008. When you are filling in your order, contact us for a code which will give you Half Off! And, whether you use the coupon or not, if your order totals $25, we'll throw in free shipping. That's at www.shop.moneyblows.com only. We've recently put up some DJ quality stereo 45 rpms for $2.75 each.
Kinks
Willie Nelson
Queen
Quiet Riot
Billy Joel
Petula Clark
KC and the Sunshine Band
Orchestra Manoeuvres in the Dark
Bette Midler
Murray Head
Paul Simon
Little Richard
Mickey & Sylvia
The Miracles
Rosanne Cash
Martha Reeves and the Vandellas
U2
Taco
The Clash
Stray Cats
Police
Bob James
Robert Plant
Meri Wilson

If you act quickly and use the coupon you could get all these 45 rpms (most of them stereo 7" singles) shipped to you free for around $30 total. That's a heap of value, and an example of what's available all over moneyblows.com for lovers of vintage music items, replacement record needles-- and, coming soon, thousands more music and books!

2008-11-13T17:05:00.004-05:00

Hi, it's me from moneyblows books & music. As life catches up with original creation, we find that that the term "money blows" is being used by various innocent bloggers and other internet denizens. Many people do not realize that the term "money blows" was coined and copyrighted by none other than myself. I am not opposed to granting permission for "fair use" of this term, although I certainly did not create the economic conditions which make it so apt. I do recall, when discussing my creation of this term with someone on a bus in Chicago in the late 1990s, they asked me if it related to some kind of prosperity philosophy. Isn't that ironic, as they might say on NPR. Or, if it were proposed as a question, which many NPR interviews use to frame their comments, I might respond, "absolutely." I do "absolutely" own the term "money blows" or "moneyblows", whether expressed in one word or two words, and anyone reading this or not reading this needs to ask my permission for its use.
It really doesn't matter how you are using it. I am currently using it for my collectibles business, for moneyblows books and music. It is completely appropriate because the value of collectibles is as elastic as the value of money. But even if you are using the term to relate to money, you still need my permission to use the term "money blows" or "moneyblows" or anything like it. My attorney tells me to contact him if ever I have any problems with people thinking they can use this expression, but I told him, hey, I'll give permission if folks only ask. So, let me know if you have any questions. I should mention, some variations on the expression, I do not own. I do not own "honey blows", for example. Or "money knows," which you should use with abandon. Or "money flows," as google suggests without any particular justification. Think for yourself, and use any expression you want, but in any language, ask me before you use "money blows" or moneyblows". Thanks.

Shop.moneyblows.com

2008-11-01T09:53:00.004-04:00

We have been gradually rebuilding our storefront where you can shop conveniently with us at shop.moneyblows.com
A quick run-through of the categories we've currently populated on the site:
10-in. vinyl records includes just a few items, never has been a big category for us. But, I should note a few very special items in this category: a Jazz at the Philharmonic Vol. 3 which is rare by any standard, featuring Al Killian, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. And, something from the 1960s, published by Scholastic under the direction of the National Gallery of Art: Music of the Shakers. It's got some pretty incredible songs and performances on it.
The next category is called 12-in. singles. Also a small category consisting of mostly dance singles.
The next category is 45 rpm vinyl records. These are the "big hole" singles, and we have quite a few in all musical styles. To find the single you're looking for, best to use the Advanced Search and enter the artist or title.
We also have 78 rpm vinyl records for advanced record collectors who like to dig deep into vinyl history. There's some great blues, jazz, and r&b here, a smattering of pop and country, and it's also best to use the Advanced Search and enter the artist or title.
Our biggest music category by far is LP vinyl records, with thousands of rare and collectible albums, and also some copies of albums that are very popular, including rock from the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s. This is the "bread and butter" category that put the "music" in our store title. An interesting piece of trivia, is that we were the first dealer to offer vinyl records on amazon.com. You can imagine that before amazon starting offering their site to anyone with a few records to sell, we pretty much owned the category of vinyl records in the early amazon "zShops." (zShops was the "z" in amazon's "everything from a to z.") Likewise, before we pioneered the category of records on amazon, we were a books-only ecommerce outfit.
Other categories: we have some audio CDs & tapes. Once again, a very small category, but with some very distinctive and hard to find jazz and classical items. We were also a pioneer in offering record replacement needles online, and you may find this category very helpful, for we have needles and cartridges not only for many vintage players, but also to replace the needles found on some inexpensive common turntables sold today at places such as Radio Shack and online from Audio Technica. Under the growing category of music history we currently have some rare copies of The Clarinet magazine, and Etude Magazine, both of which are music teacher type specialty publications. We have many more publications to add to this category, so keep an eye out if you are interested in music-related publications. Another popular category is vintage sheet music, not just for collectors but also for musicians who seek the rare verses to important tin pan alley tunes, or original arrangements or chords. Finally, we are building back our books and magazines category, starting out with the very popular Architectural Digest periodicals that have become such big sellers for us.
So, that's a rundown of the current categories, and watch shop.moneyblows.com for more every day!

Autumn day in 2008, books & music going strong!

2008-10-18T09:24:00.004-04:00

In the previous post, we gave links to URLs where moneyblows books and music can still be found. I'd also like to announce that the shopping cart is being rebuilt and you can find it (in its current state) at http://shop.moneyblows.com/
It's been quite a ride as we tried to work with our hosting company of 10+ years to restore our previous storefront. To any of you with shopping cart programs, you already realize how difficult it is to back them up, as so many of the pages seem to be controlled by scripts. So our elegant and content-filled storefront was essentially lost to the ages while the tech support people at our hosting company stalled the inevitable demise by making empty promises, leading us to think we might be restored.
In all of our dealings, we take a long-term approach, and we suffer fools gladly. It doesn't help business, though. Nor have other occurrences in the wider world. It's a good time to remind our readers that collecting books and records is not only enjoyable but lucrative. As Warren Buffett recently pointed out, the value of the dollar in the near term is a big question mark. As demand for things like oil goes down, prices have gone down. At the same time, the socialization of banks will play out in the rescuing of real estate developers with their questionable assets. This will probably prolong the recession rather than hasten its demise. We're not economic experts, but I can report that the value of our own collectibles is only increasing, not decreasing. Another virtue of the "long-term" approach is, there's little desperation unless you feel it in sympathy with your fellow man.
If you enjoy our posts, read some of the past ones and you'll learn a lot about why moneyblows books & music can help you find what you are looking for.

Books and Music on the internet

2008-08-18T20:52:00.004-04:00

Today marks a new generation for moneyblows books & music. We are hibernating the moneyblows.com address for awhile, ditching the virtual "storefront" in favor of stashing our stuff in the internet bazaar. The web storefront has become a standard feature of e-commerce, helping us grow our world market. There's a special place in our hearts for the aggregators who host premium services such as moneyblows books & music. We trundle around in America past, giving new life to old flea market treasures. We have been at this for ten plus years now, so we have learned a lot about stopping the advance of old age in collectible books, magazines, and records. We anticipate what someone might want and maybe we have it when they come looking. The internet is great for that.
So, here are links to some of the places you can still find moneyblows books & music, while our legacy address of moneyblows.com is being re-purposed.
http://moneyblows.gemm.com/
http://moneyblows.musicstack.com/
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BooksBrowse?vendorclientid=28647&page=CLIENT
http://www.amazon.com/seller/workbook
http://base.google.com/base/search?authorid=1044995
http://www.moneyblows.net

To our wonderful customers for record styli, we eagerly await your feedback on our new approach to self-service record stylus ordering. Please use this link to browse through pictures, and then just call us when you see the one you want! Here's the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/michael.pellecchia/Needles
And, while promoting a picasaweb album, might as well also point you to album covers we have recently posted:
http://picasaweb.google.com/michael.pellecchia/MusicLPSpecials
Let us know if you like to shop for record styli this way. Moneyblows Books & Music was the first internet only store to enable self-service stylus selection, so we have done our part to get some old turntables rolling again. Viva vinyl.

A story and a side note

2008-08-15T09:10:00.006-04:00

###############

I was sitting around at my brother's record store, in the shadow of the White Mountains, listening to some blues.
"Is that Gatemouth Brown," I asked.
"You're close," said the bro.
"T-Bone Walker."
"Close. next generation. Swingmasters."
"I was gonna guess that."
"You were scared to."
"No bad notes, that's for sure."
The phone rang.
"Yes, ma'am, we'll be right over," my brother said after listening for a minute.
He locked up the shop and we hopped into my 1987 Volvo 240 wagon with the graffiti all over the headliner.
A couple miles down the road past some mountain vistas, my brother pointed, and we pulled into the driveway.
A nice lady came out and Harlan introduced her to me. She led us down the hatch way into a dank cellar.
All around, there were boxes of old vinyl records. She gave us the tour.
"There's these," she said, pointing to some dank mildewy boxes.
"Those over there." We took a peek at the frayed dust jackets of tag sale detritus. Beethoven box sets. Stereo demonstration records. Old 45s.
Squeezing through the cramped aisle of the tiny basement, a light peered from the distance.
Harlan said to the lady, "can I show him that?"
We followed her toward the light. The dank smelly boxes gave way to some tidy shelves. The shelves had records on them. Ones that didn't smell.
The doorway to a little office was creaked open. That's where the light was coming from.
"This was where he worked," she said.
Until he dropped dead of a heart attack while skiing, she went on. Her late husband was pretty close to retiring from his teaching career. This was his lair, where he sold and traded records by mail order. His great hope was to retire, and then spend full time transferring his massive record inventory to the internet for sale at collector prices.
We tiptoed into the brightly lit office. Not a hair was out of place. I looked straight ahead at the shelf opposite me, just above eye level.
I reached for a record album that was displayed up there.
"This!" I hope I didn't startle the lady.
"I used to vacuum the floor to this record!," I said, startling myself.
By way of explanation, I said, you know how loud a vacuum cleaner is. Well, I would play this record even louder than the vacuum cleaner. It changed your whole perspective on mundane household tasks. Made you feel like you were in a widescreen epic film instead of chasing dust mites on the floor.
"And...."I climaxed, opening the box to show the booklet accompanying the record, "the liner notes are by my good friend, Michael H. Price."
This was none other than the rare limited, annotated reissue of The Big Country soundtrack, by the estimable composer Jerome Moross.
You could have heard a pin drop.
My brother Harlan let out a big gasp.
"We were just listening to the Swingmasters Revue," he noted accurately.
I put the record back up on the shelf.
We all looked at each other.
"I guess we better finish this job," somebody said.

#############

Side Note: Moneyblows.com has been down for all of August and our hosting company hasn't been able to get us back up yet. We apologize for the inconvenience

Digital vs. analog for vinyl record buffs

2008-07-29T09:07:00.004-04:00

Analog recording-- which is the source of most used vinyl sold at moneyblows books and music-- can be thought to essentially reflect the Victorian scientific imagination, in which sound is mechanically inscribed, rather than digitally encoded.

By contrast, the pitch, tone color, and loudness of a digital playback starts out as binary numbers intelligible to computer circuits. In other words, the presence or absence of an electric pulse (“1” or “0”) is detected and digitially converted in the original reproduction.

The waveform of the sound, as a human might hear it at this point, becomes a representation of the audio frequency, possibly encompassing more than half a million bits per second. For more than a quarter century now, this torrential bit stream has become audible when a digital recording is played back.

It all begins when a musical waveform is "sampled" at least 40,000 times per second. Each sample represents a point in time as the music unfolds. Then, the height of the sound wave at each of these 40,000 sampling points is numerically expressed. Together, these two factors accurately describe the sound wave so that it can be recorded as a series of numbers.

In playback, those numbers are fed into a device called a digital-to-analog converter which produces voltages corresponding to each number at precisely defined points in time. In this way, the digital signal is reconstituted as a waveform.

Once it is digitally encoded, the music’s fidelity is undisturbed—whether it’s on vinyl or CD, or played via a computer's own file or an internet stream, theoretically makes no difference.

A moment of digital silence—or an analogous very faint pianissimo, is preserved without tape or vinyl noise. An explosion of musical loudness needn’t be intentionally (though expertly) distorted for the putative convenience of the end user, or the delicate constitution of a record stylus.

In a digital recording, bass response is extended from 30 to 20 Hz to encompass the very lowest notes of the musical spectrum. Frequency deviation over the entire range from 20 to 20,000 Hz is reduced from ± 2 db to ± 0.5 db, resulting in clarification of tonal timbres and textures thanks to greater linearity in the crucial overtone range.

Dynamic range, i.e. the maximal span between loud and soft, is enlarged to 90 db, closely approximating the natural loudness range of live music. Distortion at maximum loudness shrinks from the traditional norm of 1% to an amount too small to be measured, resulting in the added clarity of loud passages. Finally, flutter and wow - those marginal wobbles of pitch that cause a sense of false vibrato in some conventional recordings - also reduced from the usual 0.050/0 to the point of unmeasurability.

A vinyl record, though, remains the manufactured product of its Victorian heritage—a representation of the musical waveform in inscribed (actually stamped) grooves. It’s necessarily imperfect compared with computer playback, and presents the listener with a Hobson’s choice of whether one should listen with digital ears or analog ears.

Ears are the definitive equipment for listening. The ultimate choice of digital or analog, I think, is cryptically (though oddly appropriately) laid out in the movie “Pulp Fiction,” when (I’m paraphrasing here) Uma Thurman asks John Travolta, “Do you spend your time listening, or waiting to talk?” Travolta hesitates for a moment and says, “I guess I spend most of my time waiting to talk…. But I’m working on listening.”

In listening there invariably is background noise, whether or not it disturbs the foreground intent. A truism of hearing loss is that the two eventually blend, so that the person suffering some auditory loss will say, “I can’t hear you,” particularly in a crowded room.
Using this standard, I don’t mind listening to the background noise in a vinyl record, until it gets so bad I might say to the music, “I can’t hear you.”

Digital techniques can fix that, too. People buy HD TVs so that can get better resolution of a lousy show. The greatest invention of modern culture, television, is about to be bumped off the analog spectrum as of February 2009. You are already being asked to give it up.

I have VHS tapes and records to play. Judge for yourself who is better equipped-- the digital only consumer, or the one the one who admits the imperfections wrought by Thomas Edison when he lit the known world.

R.I.P. Bo Diddley

2008-06-03T11:55:00.003-04:00

Bo Diddley made page one of the New York Times, Tuesday, June 3, 2008. Both there and on page B1, times critic Ben Ratliff wrote insightfully as suggested by the page one headline, "Bo Diddley, who Gave Rock His Beat, Dies at 79." Here's what we have in our store:

1959 maroon checker single

1957 maroon checker single

La Bamba soundtrack with Bo Diddley on it

Black label Go Bo Diddley on Checker

1958 black label on Chess debut album

It was what we called the Bo Diddley Beat and it does have a sibling resemblance to the Latin clave. The beat can be found in songs from then til now. As a founding father, he was revered by many rock'n roll fans, musicians, and students of popular culture. Like Chuck Berry, he brought a different kind of rhythm/lead guitar to the fore. Here's the times obit from 6/3/08.

Makin' Tracks by The Fivepenny Piece

2008-05-13T15:16:00.001-04:00

Like finding a needle in a haystack, sometimes we don't fully appreciate a treasure we have in our online store-- until it's SOLD! I remember never taking a second look at this album, with its early 1970s hairstyles and the group posing in front of a big steam locomotive. Folkies posing in front of trains-- well, it just didn't stand out. Then we sold it and by tomorrow it will be gone; but thank heavens we dropped the needle on this baby!
If you, like me, often wonder how such immense musical genius can go unrewarded by the consuming public, you would like this vintage 1973 album too. And, you might like the group, which does have a website. The group is called The Fivepenny Piece, or just Fivepenny Piece, and the album we have/had is called "Makin' Tracks." The music speaks for itself, and rather than bore you further with my take on it, I will just reproduced the liner notes, by a fellow named Peter Pilbeam:
"Fivepenny Piece, a coin value 5np, which could equally well stand for 'five nice people': Lynda and John Meeks, Eddie Crotty and Colin and George Radcliffe who make up one of my favourite groups. I've been listening to them for a while now and, having heard this, their latest LP, I think it can be described as definitely one for your collection.
Our Fivepenny Piece has three faces, and all are here. For example, Side One begins with Lou-Lay-Lye, words by Colin Radcliffe and music by John Meeks, a combination of talents that occurs throughout any program by Fivepenny Piece. In contrast to this plaintive song, the nonsense lyrics of Land of the Musical Telephone have distinct overtones of Edward Lear. Lynda, with assistance from John and Eddie, sings about Winter Sun and then, again in complete contrast, Eddie holds forth about those ever-popular evening classes where gallons of Homemade Brew are made.
Emerald Dew brings Lynda and brother John together again with thoughts similar to those you must have had on a summer's morning, whereas John's The Old Tyrant bemoans the cold of winter. The tempo quickens with He Willy Nilly, the man who lives in the warm, warm sun and then we are at the end of Side One with The Journeys of My Mind; but don't despair, there's more on the other side . . .
. . . beginning with The Time is Now, in which our three vocalists take an inward look at themselves. A Gradely Prayer is one of three dialect songs included in this album; Eddie takes the solo part. An old Lancashire prayer provided the words, which still make a lot of sense.
The Passing of Today poses a question for all of us as members of the human race, whereas in The Day of the Rain John tells about . . . - but I'll not spoil the end for you. It's comedy time again folks, with a brand new song from our prolific pair, as Eddie complains I'm Henpecked! Last song but one is Rembrandt; it tells how that famous Dutch painter ended his days. Leaving you on a happy note, which is the way Fivepenny Piece always leave me, we have another nonsense song, a catchy tune with lyrics to match in See-Saw Song.
I can't leave these notes without mentioning the sympathetic backing of Colin and George on guitar and bass guitar; to me they help tremendously in the enjoyment of all these songs. Well, there it is, all "homemade brew" (to pinch one of their titles), and if this is your first experience of the music of Fivepenny Piece, I guarantee you'll come back time and time again to this disc and fifteen songs that are different. In this day and age that's saying something!"

A few other quick notes before I send this album out to the lucky buyer: A couple of familiar British musical stars are credited: Kevin Godley on drums and Alan Parsons as recording engineer (along with Dave Fleming.) Producer was Bob Barratt. The front cover photo was taken at the Dinting Railway Centre, Glossop, Derbyshire. The label is Columbia / EMI and the record number is SCX 6536. If you ever see this record in a bargain bin, don't let it escape your clutches!

Record Store Day, April 19, 2008

2008-04-18T08:46:00.003-04:00

According to an industry association, tomorrow, April 19, is "Record Store Day," celebrating the fast-fading breed of retailers who sell hard copies of digital music as well as the more specialized product of analog hard copies, otherwise known as vinyl records. Actually, the latter are more than "hard copies," they are actual music reproductions from performances captured on acetate, wire, tape, or more recently, hard drives.
According to an article in a national newspaper, record stores are closing at a record pace. For whatever reason, today's music consumers plug themselves into their digital sources rather than physically engage in playback activities. The most common exceptions to this rule are DJ's, who maintain the culture by spinning records and adding some twists of their own.
At moneyblows books and music, our storefront is complete virtual, but we agree with what performer Regina Spektor had to say recently about record stores: "They have their own art form." Anyone who read the book or saw the movie "High Fidelity" is familiar with the all-knowing record store clerk, who can still be found in big urban centers and strategically located stores such as the Princeton Record Exchange in New Jersey.
Former record store employees are now a big fixture on the world wide web, using their knowledge to sell records all over the planet from their home offices. Where we write this blog from-- in New Hampshire-- the online sellers are often former record store know-it-alls, such as the guy who calls himself "wingo" on ebay. Another longtime online seller, up in Conway, New Hampshire, actually opened a physical location in 2007, a gutsy thing to do in a declining business. Yes, he is struggling to stay open, working part-time at a convenience store selling lottery tickets, since he has figured out what people in his market area really want to buy. Yes, there are a few record buyers, and they know where to go-- to his store on Main Street, in a quaint old building with a brick storefront, and they know he has irregular hours, and they know to make an appointment if they're really serious about buying-- or, more often than not-- selling the records they haven't played in years.
As I celebrate record store day-- our online store does indeed fall into Regina Spektor's definition of an "art form," I think of how record buying began for me. It wasn't record stores! I remember browsing through all the records every week at Birnbaum's Furniture on Main Street in New Britain, Conn. They all had list prices of $3.98 or so-- too much for a guy saving up for a bicycle with his paper route money-- but at least you could see what was coming out from week to week. Then there was Warren's Music on West Main Street-- he is still there, I saw him last week standing like a mummy in front of his cash register, same as in 1962, where the 45 rpms were kept in neat bins, from 67 to 98 cents each, and Warren would shoo you away if you were just browsing. That was a true record store and it was not for the faint of heart.
The affordable records were at Woolworth's, also on Main Street in New Britain. From the 1960s until the 1980s, a half hour spent in Woolworth's could yield any number of treasures from the 99 cent discount bin. This is where I cultivated record browsing; no one at Woolworth's cared how much time you spent in their bins. Then, as downtown New Britain fell victim to white flight, strip shopping centers flowered in the suburbs; just as disposable income began to come more freely to a young teenager with a paper route, a summer job in the tobacco fields, and the occasional garage band gig.
We started our after-school sessions at Sears, the anchor store at Corbins Corner, which had several price points for records, using color codes. Then we moved to the Neisners discount store, which had the kind of stock that Woolworth's had pioneered-- records that were out of date by as little as a couple months.
As indoor malls took over the shopping addicts from strip centers, the creature called a "record store," flowered in the form of chain stores too numerous to mention-- all gone now. Frankly, most of them were boring to a young person conditioned to treasure hunt for records. Their neat classifications and rapacious pricing took all the fun out of record shopping. In the long run, those stores paved the way for CDs.
The next big record store in my life was Record Town in Fort Worth, Texas. It was a family run cubbyhole on the campus strip on University Drive, with a know-it-all owner who would give you an informal Ph.D in popular music, but an unspoken rule was, you had to buy something; he didn't stay in business by either talking or listening. It was there I learned about some of the great Texas artists in jazz, blues and r&b, and later played with the owner's son in the blues band that formed my own playing style on tenor sax.
The family-owned operation couldn't afford too many discounts, though. They specialized in service, getting you anything you wanted in the Schwann catalog if it wasn't in stock. By this time, it was back to Woolworth's, which still held court in downtown Fort Worth. And, you never knew what department store might try a discount record bin for awhile-- the medium was fading fast and "unwanted" vinyl treasures got cheaper and cheaper.
Finally a person has all the records they need. Already having an online bookstore, I added records to it. And, record needles, in honor of the wonderful product line that accompanies records from Warren's to Record Town. You would never find record needles at a discount or department store; the provenance of my own stock is Radio Shack stores which discontinued the items in the mid-1990s.
What makes us stick with records? Things like this: today I have an order for Bob Dylan's album "Self Portrait." A little research reveals that the buyer is ordering from Italy.... a little more research reveals he is buying up every copy of this album he can find.... a little more research reveals that some sellers are refusing to sell to him, thinking he is a scammer because of ordering so many copies....a little more research suggests he is driving up the price of the Bob Dylan Self Portrait gatefold album.....a little more research reveals that..... he's a Bard College art professor working on a sculpture constructed out of these gatefold album covers!
That kind of thing happens more often than you might think in the strange world of record selling.
Even stranger is knowing that probably no one, or certainly a very few, humans will ever lay eyes on this blog entry. In that respect, it makes me not much different from the spectral portrait I viewed last week, standing on the sidewalk on West Main Street in New Britain, Conn., peering through the window at Warren's Music Centre. Standing at the cash register, his hawkish chin and prominent nose in clear profile, staring straight ahead at the wall; it's Warren himself.... waiting for a record buyer.

2008-04-11T09:04:00.004-04:00

Ferrari in the news? If you have a Ferrari, you probably make your own news. Ferrari owners, true to their income brackets, are a clannish lot and have long reported their doings in publications not only authorized by Ferrari, but also through owners clubs and the king of all Ferrari publications, Cavallino.

In the bigger world of grand prix motor racing, Ferrari is also a force. Recent "racy" news stories have quoted the legendary Ferrari champion Jody Scheckter, who won the Formula One world driver's title for the marque in 1979.

Perhaps not content for Cavallino to solely report on Ferrari activities in the glossy magazine world, the car company announced in March 2008 that they will partner with Conde Nast to co-publish a quarterly slick beginning at the end of September at the 2008 Paris Auto Show.

That's a nod to the longstanding authority of Cavallino among Ferrari owners, who collect scarce copies of the magazine and have driven back issue prices up continuously for almost a quarter century. In our store we now have some selected back issues from 1984 to 2006. We also offer the Ferrari tribute publication from the Monterey Historic Automobile Races and Ferrari Concours d'Elegance International Meet in 1984. Also, Testa Rossa Number 3 (covering the retirement of Jody Scheckter); and Ferrari Market Letter Volume 31 Number 11 covering the 2006 Mille Miglia.

To see any or all of these items, click the links above or type in "Ferrari" or "Cavallino" in our search box. All the items come from one collector who hasn't owned a Ferrari in a while. Why do some of them seem so scarce? The scarcity derives from so many Ferrari collectors being the "buy and hold" types. Chances are, any of these publications you buy from us today will resell for more in the days and months to come. It's certainly not a promise or even a suggestion, but if past history holds true, scarce copies of Cavallino almost never go down in price. If you would like to compare prices, we suggest going to Cavallino's own website, where they also provide back issues and pretty much set the market price for them. Happy racing!

2008-03-17T10:18:00.002-04:00

If the "60s" means anything to you, it might be because you're pushing 60, and also grew up in the "1960s." We have just databased dozens of Boys' Life magazines from 1960 through 1966, now offered in our store. If you'd likely to quickly cruise through some examples of the table of contents of this magazine, here are links to 1966 and 1964-65. Many other TOCs are provided in text form with the listings for the individual issues. Boys' Life Magazine was a repository for both some of the most famous and most obscure contributors that people admire. Now, when you search Norman Rockwell on our site, you will see not only Life and Saturday Evening Post covers but also Boys' Life magazine covers. When you search Isaac Asimov, Pearl S. Buck, Margaret Mead, you will now see some of their Boys' Life Magazine contributions in the search results on moneyblows.com.

Science fiction, prehistoric fiction, cartoons, photo features, and how-tos all intermingled with essential Boy Scout propaganda messages, such as wearing your uniform as often as possible, owning as many accessories as possible, and working your way up the ranks so you will be ready for athletic or military society, or even higher education, as fate will have it.

In the time frame of these issues, the table of contents page changed its layout around three times. The back cover soft drink ads morphed from 1950s activity scenarios to 1960s image advertising (show a huge bottle). There was nary a hint of impropriety or rebellion within its pages, and pleasing authority was considered more important than pleasing a girl. The magazine contains hidden gems for those willing to look, such as multi-part adventure stories and interviews with luminaries such as Yogi Berra and Willie Mays, and photo features by Ansel Adams and Philippe Halsman. Many collectors have gotten hooked on Boys' Life Magazine; one has even indexed all the "Think and Grin" and "Daffynition" entries that refer to the Beatles ("What do you call longhair music? Anything by the Beatles.")

Having added this Boys' Life Magazine selection to our store, we feel the sense of ennui that accompanies the fatigue of having worked very hard on something profoundly useless. Reason enough for a new merit badge.

2008-03-01T12:18:00.004-05:00

"Listening to a gramophone used to be an irksome business. Nowadays, however, it is possible to be altogether as absorbed in a fine piece of music.... as one would be in the concert hall."
Frank Swinnerton wrote the above in 1923.
"At last an orchestra really sounds like an orchestra; we get.... what we rarely had before-- the physical delight of passionate music in the concert room or opera house."
Ernest Newman wrote the above, about the advent of electrical recording, in 1926.
"Of greatest significance is the replacement of a conventional stylus with a laser beam that scans the record, thus eliminating not only end-of-side distortion but also the friction that generates record wear."
Mortimer H. Frank wrote the above in 1983, about the advent of CD playback.
Since the early 1980s, other things have also changed. Broadcast radio. Music in popular culture. What the eye sees when it hears music. Sheet music. Big hole records. LP records, tapes, CDs. The recipes for making the music: playing an instrument....turning on a radio....spinning a record......popping in a CD. The recipes for care of the artifact.... keep it clean.... put it back in its container..... etc. etc.
Now, similar to when the music industry once deemed the CD would replace the vinyl record, and with popular demand for live music performances less than ever, computerized music is flourishing in its newly miniaturized form, as bits and bytes on inter-networked computers and computer-like appliances. Freed from the irrelevant fetish you hold in your hand-- that record album, that digital storage disc-- music can just be its wonderful invisible self and show off its variety, its border-crossings, its moods, glow,the genius of its practitioners-- and never mind the business model that required garish advertising packages to attract the attention of store buyers. Internet radio in particular provides listeners with amazing tools for understanding and organizing their music listening.
A steady stream of new stuff can pour into the consciousness of anyone whether they are traipsing to a subway stop, sitting in a corporate cubicle, killing an infidel enemy or sending ringtones to friends. Music lovers can travel light while they behold the heaviest sounds.
In this light, alas, a collection of vinyl represents a time past, imbued with the values that attach to your sense of nostalgia (or not.) Lately in the store we have been adding dozens of sheet music songsheets and folios ranging from the late 1800s to around 1950. The often garish covers of these piano/vocal scores might promote the song, or feature the show the song appeared in; maybe even the stars of a film or musical theatre production. The illustration styles reflect the times. People had pianos not iPods. 78 rpm players, not hi-fi's. Radios, not televisions.
We've also put up a few Mosaic Records brochures. These lovely magazines from the 1980s and 1990s were the periodic catalogs of the company run by Michael Cuscuna and Charlie Lourie. The lovingly and discerningly packaged jazz reissues on the Mosaic label incorporated both respect for the originals and the added value of care and significance. The brochure catalogs contain helpful discography information and intelligent articles about the featured artists.
Both examples of ephemera in our store-- songsheets from the early 20th century and reissue catalogs from the late 20th century-- reflect a certain place and time in the dissemination of popular music. Although we do link to amazon mp3 catalogs in our online store, we will always specialize in the older, advertising/artifact encumbered music media. You had to be somewhere to play it on the piano or spin it on a turntable. You couldn't just be anywhere to select your own music, as is possible today. The transistor radio (1960s) provided a glimpse at what we now can experience as exactly the music we want, anytime we want it. Still, I don't know when I'll stop reading the back of an album cover, probably never!

2008-02-11T18:32:00.000-05:00

Couple of quick notes on the store's newest LP additions:
King Henry and the Showmen spawned a tradition of tight Pocono-area bands, from Pennsylvania where jazz and polka have deep roots. A Walt Solek album, Hanky Panky, has a great version of I Had But Fifty Cents, which Robert Crumb could have heard in his childhood, since it ended up on his Cheap Suit Serenaders album from the 1970s.
You can act against George Raft in "They Drive By Night" thanks to this record which lets you do various scenes opposite Raft.
Has there ever been another country concept album like The Game of Triangles? In this curious package, Bobby Bare, Norma Jean, and Liz Anderson look at love life from three sides now.
We're very excited about spicing up the collection with latin styles. Trombone Jazz Samba by Bob Brookmeyer, and The Best of Los Paraguayos, are just hints of more Latin to come.
Russian culture gets a nod with The Don Cossacks and Balalaika Favorites; the latter was an early state of the art Mercury Living Presence disc recorded live in Moscow with American gear and technology. Speaking of those pesky Russians, you ought to hear Stars for Defense, one of the Office of Civil Defense propaganda recordings from the Cold War. And speaking of the Cold War, Slim Pickens was great in Dr. Strangelove and he's also great on this eponymous album.
Like to polka? Type in Jimmy Sturr in our search box. Or Eddie Blazonczyk, or Walt Solek.
Jazz item of the week is Red Norvo Trio / Cal Tjader Quartet on respective sides of this Jazztone release, Delightfully Light

2008-02-09T16:55:00.000-05:00

The latest group of additions to our store reminds me of something a friend said once, "I think of you guys as a flea market." Not a high compliment, but the term once signalled no lack of variety, in the sense of "5 & 10"or "general store" and indeed.... moneyblows supplies a general store of music from the 1950s through the 1980s, the same stuff that was available then, only older.
They say you can't be a storekeeper and a collector at the same time, and being a storekeeper is first with us. But we secretly hope many will be buried in our grave with us like the treasures of the great Egyptian Pharaohs (don't need a pyramid, just a record turntable and a decent stylus).Knocky Parker, King Henry and the Showmen, Osipov State Russian Folk Orchestra, Slim Pickens, Judy Holliday, Red Norvo, Pinto Colvig and Susannah Young.
Why do we thrive on the minutiae of pop music variety from the 1950s and 1960s, when the world seems to falling apart? Judging by our customer base and the world map posted in our mailroom, the variety of music is exceeded only by the variety of enthusiasts. From our Texas roots to our New England fullfillment center, which opens onto a hay field covered with snow, we like to keep the memories moving!

2008-01-25T14:14:00.000-05:00

Early part of the winter here has been occupied with our store digesting an interesting record collection from an estate.
Among the bargain classicals about to be offered are a Turnabout disc of Carl Nielsen's Flute Concerto and Clarinet Concerto, Joseph Deak and Paul Pazmandi, with the Philharmonia Hungarica.
Swingle II, love songs for madrigals and madriguys, by the creative arranger from the 1960s, Ward Swingle,including electric piano, harpsichord, and ARP synthesizer.
Music minus one piano accompaniments for solo violin-- great for practicing to composers from Schumann to Schubert to Faure to Grieg. Music Minus One Violin, Joseph Seiger, piano.
Boston Pops and Arthur Fiedler Concert in the Park, a wonderfully parklike 1963 set.
Rare album by Zino Francescatti, consisting of encores on early Columbia Masterworks with Artur Balsam, piano.
Used Jazz LPs are best picked up for a tenner or so at garage sales, but if you're looking for the occasional rare item, or heavy hitters playing together, these are from our new under-$20 batch: Dark of Light by Norman Connors, Giants with Dizzy Gillespie and Bobby Hackett, from 1971; Loud Jazz by John Scofield, Portrait of Thelonious by Bud Powell, David Chesky Band and others. I highly recommend both Sergio Mendes on The Swinger from Rio, and The Songs of Percy Faith played by the Lansdowne Jazz Group.
In the same price range we have some freshly collected Sinatra Capitol medallions: Come Dance With Me!, Come Swing with Me!, Sings the Select Cole Porter, and the Reprise issues Strangers in the Night and That's Life. That gets you Sinatra backings by Billy May, Ernie Freeman, Nelson Riddle and the Ray Charles knock-off sound of Ol' Blue Eyes' "That's Life." Just type "Frank Sinatra" in the search at our store.
What a pleasure it is to offer a selection of American polka records from the 1960s and beyond. You'll recognize some artist names: Dick Rodgers, Walt Solek, Larry Chesky, Dick Pillar, Lil Wally, Eddie Blazoncyk, Joe Twarog, Jimmy Sturr (got lots of his!), Ray Henry and many others. Just type "polka" in the search at our store.
This record never lasts long in our store: One Stormy Night by the Mystic Moods Orchestra. The best sounding thunder and rainstorm ever on vinyl, brilliantly set to music.
Finally, a mostly NM batch of Disneyland Records and a few Buena Vistas: Best of Disney Volume 1 and 2; Merriest Songs, Merry Christmas Songs, Mickey, Goofy, It's a Small World, Larry Groce, and many more. All nice copies from the 1960s and 1970s and each under $20. For these and much more used copies of Disney records, articles and books about Disney, etc. , just type "Disney" in the search at our store.
It is with deep regret that we bid farewell to our white label Vee Jay Beatles 45 rpm promo, which is the biggest Beatles item we've sold since the holidays, when rare Beatles were being bought as gifts. Thank you forever John Paul George Ringo.
Also thank you Santa for the 1916 windup Columbia Graphophone. Any advice on needles?

2008-01-24T22:46:00.000-05:00

Twelve inch vinyl LP records, with their album lengths, their generous graphic packages, extensive credits, historic value, and great playability provide a wonderful window on the eras when they dominated music sales.

From the days when television was emerging on the scene and fighting for the hearts and minds of children, there were live animal dogs in Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, animated dogs in Huckleberry Hound. There were the amazingly hidden musical talents of Bonanza TV’s original cast. There was the famous bird Woody Woodpecker.

If that weren’t enough animals you could find more in the Stories of Uncle Remus. Music just came naturally to the Guest stars of the Hee-Haw Show. Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland holds a special place with many fans of the 1950s and 1960s, when it sold many color TVs.

You may wonder why vocalist Artie Wayne puts a picture of Anita Ekberg on his album cover. Wonder again at Ronnie Deauville Smoke Dreams and Reid King, Tommy Andre, New Wave.

Back to the 1960s, who remembers the 1967 Boston Red Sox Impossible Dream? And Songs that made Johnny Cash famous, on the original Sun label.

Moneyblows’ extensive jazz holdings are graced by the additions of Mezz Mezzrow, Frankie Newton, and Rebecca Parris.

Collectors of gospel and r&b will appreciate the Dixie Hummingbirds on Peacock; , the extremely rare Clyde McPhatter Live at the Apollo. Also Maxine Brown’s Greatest Hits.

2008-01-04T09:10:00.000-05:00

It will soon be 20 years since F. Ross Johnson, CEO of RJR Nabisco, led Wall Street out of the October 1987 crash into what was then the largest leveraged buyout (LBO) in U.S. history. Black Monday 1987 had harmed many stock values, and highly publicized tobacco liability litigation was also hurting RJR Nabisco.
Johnson, nicknamed "The Pope," made a $75 million sweetheart deal with his directors, according to the then-bestseller, Barbarians at the Gate, by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar.
Everyone on Wall Street looked for a way into the deal. First, investment bankers who saw the huge cash flow from the company's tobacco arm. They and many others would reap huge fees associated with the restructuring of the company. The prize, such as it was, would go to Kohlberg, Kravis,Roberts, and the money that blew around the eye of the storm amounted to about $20 billion.
It seems like a long time ago now, and some of the characters in the story (which was made into a Hollywood movie) are still around. The bestselling book is a reminder that business history can provide some swashbuckling reading, and our store has an interesting section specializing in business history.

2008-01-03T09:02:00.000-05:00

Ruth Wallis has just passed on at the age of 87, noted in one newspaper obituary as "singer-writer of risque songs."
Records by this great singer/songwriter/pianist have passed through my hands with great frequency, always getting a turntable play before being tossed into the curb pile.
Not because the music's not good, mind you.... how could there be a bad "Hopalong Chastity," or "Dinghy Song." If you like Nellie McKay you might like the less intellectual, more bawdy, and perhaps equally indefatigable Ms. Wallis.
The reason we've sold only a few is that most original Ruth Wallis vinyl is of the "well-loved" variety-- bumped and scratched around as if playing host to too many a happy party of adult humor aficionados in the 1950s.
Instead of dropping acid and listening to Jefferson Airplane, these young parents of future hippies were drinking manhattans and listening to "Johnny Has a Yo-Yo," and "Stay Out of My Pantry." Ruth Wallis was actually banned in Boston. She put out her own records. And, she sang and played as well as any jazz or cabaret artist; her music and voice are appealing even without the constant double entendre. If you find any records by her, give them a listen. As a start, here's one available right now!

2008-01-02T09:49:00.000-05:00

Photos taken around 8 a.m., looking south with the Davis burial ground to the far right. Jan. 2, 2008. If you have GPS you can plot this location precisely from a satellite in the sky.

Last year I was in Texas on Christmas and New Year's, so this year in New Hampshire was different. I find how much more traveling one can do in New England than even in Texas. When there was a visit to be done in Texas, it might be from 3-6 hours driving, one way. Turning most day trips into 2 day trips. And gradually eliminating them from consideration, so one could stay home longer. Up here in New Hampshire, a state with the entire population of our metro area alone in Texas, a day trip has to receive more careful consideration. There are a lot of visits to make ranging from 1 1/2 hours driving one way, to 5 hours driving one way. There's even one very important visit (our son) who could be reached by driving 6 hours each way-- straight into Manhattan, where's there's no parking.
You get the picture. A different matrix for visits.
Two of those potential visits dropped out of consideration this holiday season. Predictably, it was the two longest ones, 5 hours to Roxbury, NY and 6 hours to Manhattan. There were other visits of the 1 1/2 to 3 hour variety.
On New Year's Eve day a spontaneous dinner date was arranged over in Dublin, NH about 20 miles from the Vermont border. We made some brownies to bring, packed some champagne and drove from the farm near Dover along Rt. 125 south and 101 west. Driving from the seacoast "microclimate" to the Monadnock area "microclimate" was a visual feast of clouds, mist and whiteness in varying shades, punctuated by intersecting the "Queen City" of Manchester, NH.
New Year's Eve found us perusing an eccentric curator's collection of books, weapons, musical instruments, playing Booker T.'s "Hip Hug-ger" on vintage keyboards, watching Dick Clark drop the ball, and then listening to The Band and the Best of the Animals on CD. Driving back east, early the next morning, the clear Monadnock sky, peppered with clouds full of boding, gradually transformed itself into an ocean mist gleaming with sunrise. Beyond, the ocean might be 20 miles further to the east, but the effect causes this decidedly inland part of New Hampshire to exaggeratedly be called the "Seacoast" region. I think it also is part of "Southern New Hampshire," which looks a lot more like northern Massachusetts, except refreshingly sparser, than the rest of New Hampshire.
On the next day, in the middle of a dangerous blizzard, I ventured north to return a guitar to someone who had left it at the house over the holidays. About 55 miles up the Spaulding Turnpike from Rochester, the storm hit with a vengeance and, for quite awhile after that, traffic moved at 5 mph, wending around other cars which had run off the road, hit each other, or hot dogging just to see if they could pull out of a skid. I welcomed a chance to vigorously roadtest the 1995 Celica beater I was driving. This has been among the most reliable cars we have ever had, and the mileage economy has just encouraged more driving. But, I had never put it through the paces that the Spaulding presented during this terrible snowstorm, which, as it approached the "Seacoast" area, added rain to the mix and caused brakes and windshields to ice over. Having made it through that, with roads barely treated in the respective jurisdictions along the road, I wouldn't hesitate to take out the low-slung, standard transmission, mostly fiberglas Celica again. It's a real trouper. The guitar is back to its home and so am I.
If you drive in New Hampshire during this type of weather, do not expect clear sailing on the roads. Each driver must work together with the other drivers so that everybody gets where they are going. I did have moments when I thought the miles-long line of cars might be spending the night on the Spaulding. Congratulations to the powers that be, for making sure things keep moving!
Top viewing over the holiday season included Ghost Dog, Jim Jarmusch, Forrest Whitaker, etc.; Coffee and Cigarettes, also Jim Jarmusch; the Werner Herzog film about Tim Treadwell; the "mockumentary" of the Legendary Stardust Cowboy. And just yesterday, "Legally Blonde" with Reese Witherspoon. A good dose of samurai and stardust was the fitter counterpoint to this state full of retail campaigners this week. It is so comforting to be debating the fate of the free world. We never got to do that much in Texas. What did you do over that strange time when the calendar changes but Christendom stops dead in its tracks?

2007-12-20T09:42:00.000-05:00

Playing Santa is always fun this time of year. When you are selling one-of-a-kind items like we are, you need to make sure they get down the destination chimney, and we thank the U.S. Postal Service for doing what they say they will do. At the same time we've been adding new items from interesting collections, and today I'd like to focus on the once ubiquitous 45 rpm single.
In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, it was quite usual to go into a store and buy 2 songs for 99 cents or less-- cheaper than iTunes? (I wouldn't know, we play records, tapes and CDs around here). The kicker was, they had what was called an "A" side and a "B" side. If the promoters had their ducks in a row, the "A" side would have been heard on the radio, getting you to buy it. And the "B" side was just there because it cost not much more to manufacture 2-sided vinyl records than it did to make them one-sided (which they were back around the turn of the 19th-20th century).
If you really wanted your money's worth, you might actually play the "B" side. It might be horrible, or it might be awesome. There was no telling.
There were also 45 rpms that seem destined for radio stations instead of stores. The radio station might think it was a normal record, and they might be encouraged to play it, but there was no intention of pressing mass quantities unless the record hit big on the radio. Today these can be found in various collections and they are called "promos," or "white label promos" or such (many had white labels instead of the consumer-color coded ones).
If you're familiar with the Charles Manson murders, they occurred at the home of Terry Melcher, who started life as Doris Day's son and became a record producer in his own right. We have acquired some white label promos of some of his rarest psychedelic rock issues, by Glad and Grapefruit (not sure what's with the one-word "G" names).
Psychedelic garage rock was all the rage in 1960s and band names reflected the freewheeling spirit: Crome Syrcus and We Ugly Dogs are 2 great ones.
And, behind ordinary names are some very unusual records. What ever became of Don Thomas, who sang what could only be described as a gringo "corrido" imagining what it is like to die slowly in the jungles of Vietnam.
And, for those of you who think "Dazed and Confused" is a Led Zeppelin song, perhaps you haven't heard the original by Jake Holmes.
Moving on to immortal 45 rpm singles that made history and are still treasured 40+ years later: how about an original Volt white label promo of Otis Redding's "Dock of the Bay." Or an original Beatles Yesterday/Act Naturally, one of the most perfect singles of all time, recalling Top 40 radio, a format which could accommodate bland, string-padded pop (Yesterday), and Buck Owens style Bakersfield country (Act Naturally), as long as it was by the Beatles. And conveniently, these tunes were on opposite sides of the original swirl-labeled 45 rpm single. How about a virtually mint copy of Theme from Shaft by Isaac Hayes.
There are many more than I can list here, but let's end with a couple of doozies: can you guess who did the original of Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots?
And, as much as I love the A side by Captain Paul and his Seafaring Band, the B side is actually better: I wanna be a life guard.
Outside the snow is falling and friends are calling "yoo-hoo"

2007-12-19T10:35:00.000-05:00

Joel Dorn, the "Masked Announcer," just passed away at the age of 65. His passing is mourned because of his enormous influence on keeping jazz, blues, r&b, and its variants, such as Western Swing, in front of the public long after big music corporations moved on to more lucrative pastures. He was involved with many hit records but I write here to tell only of my one "fly on the wall" experience in the control room with this genius of American music.
The Rhode Island band Roomful of Blues, with Duke Robillard in the lead guitar chair, had turned on legendary songwriter Jerome "Doc" Pomus to Jimmie Vaughan and the Thunderbirds, and thus Pomus was collaborating with Dorn on an interesting and as-yet (as far as I know) unreleased session at Regent Sound Studios in Manhattan.
In the recording studio was the Roomful horn section, collaborating with Vaughan's band in an album that hoped to recreate a classic Texas blues sound augmented by roadhouse horns in the precision style of Roomful. It was late summer 1977 as I recall.
Pomus and Dorn were at the controls, and the bands were in awe, looking for direction. Dorn's patented studio style was to let the musicians do their thing, and these club hardened players did just that.
I had recently met Doc Pomus and his invitation for me to come to the session blew me away. None of these guys had any record company support and everything was coming out of their pockets. Pomus had royalties from his hit songs, and as he described it, "Joel makes a lot of money with Leon Redbone," one of the artists in his production portfolio.
The sessions went fine and were notable mainly for being so untainted with commercial considerations. Time and again, figures such as Joel Dorn and Doc Pomus made music for love and not money. At the same time they refreshed America's musical legacy by making new music with old ideas.
Dorn produced albums as diverse as Bette Midler's The Divine Miss M and Leon Redbone's Double Time. Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Les McCann and Eddie Harris, Asleep At The Wheel, Roberta Flack, and the Neville Brothers all benefited from his touch. All of them "reinvented the wheel" rather than striving for a pinpoint blast at nanoculture. Bette Midler and Leon Redbone are still out there doing it. R.I.P. Joel Dorn.
Another passing of note: Laura Archera Huxley, age 96. Known as mostly as the widow of Aldous Huxley, I highly recommend her book You Are Not The Target if you can find a copy.

2007-12-05T09:13:00.000-05:00

Ralph Guldahl never really had a tremendous desire to win. So despite being born within a year of Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson and Sam Snead, and being equally talented, he is not a household word in golf circles as the others are.

He joined the PGA Tour in 1932, and nearly won the 1933 U.S. Open. From 1937 to 1939, Guldahl won 3 majors: 2 U.S. Opens ('37 and '38) and the '39 Masters. He won three straight Western Opens (1936-38) at a time when the Western Open was considered by tour players to be a major. In his brief PGA Tour career, Guldahl won 16 tournaments and finished second 19 times.

He quit the Tour in 1942, returning only briefly in 1949. He was not a technician but instead had an unusual swing that really worked for him. He was said to be calm, deliberate, and stoic on the course.

The towering, 6 ' 2" Texan Guldahl focused on his game rather than his showmanship, though many commented on his habit of combing his hair before executing a shot. Ralph simply stated: "it checks my pace and helps me to retain a confident composure."

He wrote the 1937 book "From Tee to Cup: By The Four Masters," bringing in the Masters: "Woods" by Gene Sarazen; "Long Irons" by Denny Shute; "Short Irons" by himself; "Scoring Zone" by Johnny Revolta; and "Putting and Puzzle Shots", with tips from all four.

Having analyzed golf swings in the book, and then never re-entering tournament play again, he caused some fans to speculate a case of "Paralysis by Analysis."

His own explanation is that he was not that much into winning. From 1959 to 1987 is was Director of Golf at Braemar Country Club in Tarzana, California, and his signature sandwich is still on the Guldahl Grill Room menu.

And, for your golf-swing-analyzing friend who has everything, consider a gift of one of the few remaining original 1937 editions of From Tee to Cup, signed by Guldaul himself.

2007-12-04T08:17:00.000-05:00

On Sept. 9, 1954, a young rockabilly singer played at the grand opening of a shopping center; he was paid $10 to perform on a flat-bed truck parked in front of the Katz Drug Store. The next day he began a long session of recording at a local studio. He worked for hours on several song covers which were never released.

Finally things fell into place while he and the studio group were covering the 1948 r&b hit "Good Rockin' Tonight." Later that day, or maybe the next day, he recorded a pop tune he had heard in a movie, "I don't care if the sun don't shine."
These two sides became Sun 210, released on Sept. 25, 1954.
That night, Elvis appeared at the Eagle's Nest Club with the Tiny Dixon Band. The single record release, Elvis' second, would not hit big. But artistically, this Sun single represents one of the best performances of Elvis' career.

This is the original Sun 210 single. There's something special about owning it.
As life neatly arranges itself into archives with the help of computers, this unmistakable artifact reminds us of the mechanical and agricultural age when popular music started to rock and roll, as if creating a vulgar secular church.
Condition of the grooves in this Sun rarity is very good, and both sides play through nicely, with all the excitement of early Elvis on wax.
The label has some ring wear but no markings. There's a slight smudge on the author credit of "Good Rockin' Tonight"-- the word "Brown" can be read but not the word "Roy." (Both Roy Brown and Wynonie Harris had previous hits with this song). The artist credit is Elvis Presley Scotty and Bill.
Details suggesting an authentic original are the round punch marks on the label, for juke boxes, which usually distinguish originals. Previous ownership cannot be determined though it seems to have arrived previously undetected in a batch of beat-up old Frankie Avalons, Cadillacs, etc. Trail-off numbers in the deadwax are U-130-45-72. The record is in a plain white sleeve. It is worth well over a thousand dollars.

2007-12-03T08:29:00.000-05:00

It's the first snowstorm of the year in Northern New England. Here's the view from the office. And here are some titles from the store with "snow" in them. After that, I write in the style of the New York Times columnist who I find so epigraphic, Verlyn Klingenborg.

merv griffin i never has seen snow

The Angels: Snowflakes and Teardrops

Snowflakes are Dancing by Tomita

Kenny and Corky: Nuttin' for Christmas and Suzy Snowflake

1907 book Delilah of the Snows

Snow White Rock Christmas by the Vibra Corporation

Anyone who can think about snow at the same time that it is snowing is in privileged company, clinging to the whim of weather however precariously.
Will it reach a half a foot high? A foot? More? There's nothing to do but watch or check back later.
Unless you're driving a salt truck or a snow plow. You could do the same thing over again several times today.
Is it going to affect business? Is the power going to be out? Is the furnace on its last legs? Got some wood and a kerosene heater handy? Got some fruitful indoor work to do? Want to go out snowshoeing?
Should I start shoveling snow? Crank up the snowblower? Nothing like a snowblower blowing snow back on you.
Can we still sell something today?
Perhaps, because we have customers where it isn't snowing.

2007-11-30T09:08:00.000-05:00

Browsing in the Harlan Wolfe's Music record store in Conway, New Hampshire, I heard a comment from a shopper who walked in and confronted all the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's vinyl records and said, "Too much past all at once."
It was a feeling I often have when looking through vinyl record accumulations to buy. It clouds the mind, this rush of visual and audio references from long ago.
And it was a feeling that came up while listening to a record that arrived in a recently acquired collection. The record label says, "Office of Civil Defense, 'Stars for Defense,' with Vaughn Monroe, Jay Jackson and Ray Bloch and his Orchestra, Program No. 332, Do not play before Feb. 10, 1963."
Since it is well after that date, I did not think I would be prosecuted for playing this record. Typically, a product like this would be supplied to radio station turntables for the weekly 15-minute program in which listeners could learn what a good job the Office of Civil Defense was doing. Much of their task was to make Americans comfortable with buying canned and dry goods, and rotating them in and out of their fallout shelters.
Never heard of a fallout shelter?
That was the homeland security bonanza of the 1950s and 1960s, which we would construct in our suburban cellars and schools, and where we were all supposed to go in the event of an "irrational attack" or "enemy miscalculation." Those are the phrases used on the recording.
There is no mention on the vinyl of who the supposed enemy might be, but the context of the Cold War made it perfectly clear.
And what constituted an "irrational attack," or "enemy miscalculation," was not left to chance. The words "Hiroshima" or "Nagasaki" are not mentioned. But, the general idea of buying canned goods, radiometers, and geiger counters, was to survive in your own, or the community's, fallout shelter, while the holocaust of a nuclear blast played itself out on the erstwhile homeland.
The kernel of our patriotic duty in a time of nuclear tragedy, circa Feb. 10, 1963, was apparently to die slowly, underground, surrounded by empty cans and water jugs.
This is where our well-meaning (I guess) government was leading us on the preparation front.
In this unsteady light-- as I mentioned above, "too much past all at once" can cloud your thinking-- I will quote the lyrics of the song Vaughn Monroe proceeds to warble on this record, in the holiday spirit of the month that begins tomorrow:

"Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful,
and since we've no place to go, let it snow, let it snow.
Oh it doesn't show signs of stopping, and I've got some corn for popping,
and the lights are turned way down low, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
When we finally kiss goodnight, how I hate going out in the storm,
But if you really hold me tight, all the way home I'll be warm.
The fire is slowly dying, and my dear, we're still goodbying,
But as long as you love me so, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow."

Surely no irony was intended. I was also struck by the seeming influence of Vaughn Monroe on
Leon Redbone.

2007-11-29T09:32:00.000-05:00

Not that long ago I had the privilege of seeing a performance by Alfred J. Gallodoro at the Sego Cafe in Oneonta, New York. He is a 94-year old saxophone and clarinet virtuoso, once the widely acknowledged master of double- and triple- tonguing, who still sells off the bandstand a CD transcription of his 1951 Columbia album Saxophone Contrasts.
His improvising is pre-bebop-- even pre-jazz, and he has been acknowledged as a master of the instrument by Paquito D'Rivera, Benny Golson, Buddy DeFranco and Eddie Daniels. Jimmy Dorsey called him "the greatest saxophone player that ever lived."
So you say, "I never heard of him." Accomplishments of many woodwind artists in the past half century have virtually wiped his name off the map. And, in reality, as a studio sideman mainstay he virtually assured himself a decent living at the expense of fame.
Yet it causes one to reflect at what price the preservation of tradition sincerely felt. (As opposed to the 'dixieland' style of slogging away ignorantly at a stylized gig).
Bringing to mind a jazz singer I once met, who left her home town of New Orleans, got some lucky breaks, and was soon playing Carnegie Hall and all the great New York jazz rooms.
At first, people readily accepted that she preferred to sing the old standards-- All The Things You Are by Jerome Kern, I love you by Cole Porter, Someone to Watch Over Me, by Gershwin.
After awhile, praise grew less, and faults were found: she doesn't compose her own songs, she sticks to much to the older stuff, depending too much on them.
Still she kept singing You'd be so nice to come home to, Lush Life, You do something to me. Every now then a newer tune perhaps-- What a Wonderful World, One Note Samba, something from a musical or a movie on the hit parade.
The critics and audiences loved her as long as she seemed new. But eventually, in every place where the economic ecosystem worships new ideas, new songs, and fresh faces, her star faded. She knew in her heart that her style would not help her career.
Her gigs became less desirable. Smaller rooms, less pay, noisier audiences. Still, she kept singing the same old songs.
Finally the jazz singer was lucky enough to get a gig playing a show in Las Vegas. It was steady work, six nights a week, to the tinkle of slot machines and the chatter of gamblers. She was considered a musician's musician, and many of her famous friends thought her time would come again. But there was no mistaking the fact that she had fallen far. Once a critic's darling, playing the very best of showcases, considered to be an up-and-coming star. Now, barely a has-been. One of her admirers, a famous musician in his own right, took her aside once and said as gently as he could, "You passed up your chance to be a popular success. You have spent too much time singing the songs made famous by others."
"I know," she replied. "People think I threw away my career, just for the sake of some old songs. It probably seems as though I've spent too much time with too few melodies. Perhaps I should have moved beyond these songs many years ago. But I am perfectly content. These are the songs I sing for one reason and one reason only: so I won't forget them."

2007-11-28T10:12:00.000-05:00

Now that I've received invitations to join "LinkedIn" by several mailing lists (I almost said "people" but it's their email lists which really issue the invitation) it's cause to meditate on that thing I'm terrible at: networking.

I define it here as a concentrated activity geared solely toward increasing your connections. Some people do this naturally, others have to work at it. In some recently published audio interviews, Kurt Vonnegut called it "making friends." And, I really think he intended no irony.

Connections are important to people, and important connections are even more important. Growing up Catholic, one became aware of the Ascension of Christ, as he was drawn up into heaven when His post-Resurrection networking days were over. Needless to say, fortunes have been built and wars have been fought over this one proto-important networking event.

Then there are the fringe exploitations of connections, tied into the pathologies of relationships. Crime which occurs in immediate families. Stalking famous people. Being drawn to absolute strangers. Celebrity sightings.

The student-run newspaper of the University of New Hampshire reports a celebrity visitor to the UNH vs. Boston College hockey game on Nov. 10. "Game-goers who saw McCain reported that he was seated on the side of the Whittemore Arena and up in the box seats, high above the stands. 'He was right over there on the side. I saw him. It was pretty cool,' said Allyson Bergendahl, a UNH pep band sousaphone player."

Pretty cool, seeing a political opportunist from a distance. For more on this type of phenomenon, read Verlyn Klingenborg's column in the Nov. 28 New York Times.

There used to be (and probably still is) a fringe network of people who think they are related to Elvis, Jesus, or Robert E. Lee. Is Obama a distant relation of Cheney? Are there six degrees of separation between everyone, or just between you and Kevin Bacon?

Other than relationships with family, people attach a high value to the structured connections of work. Business is a predominant force in any society because it regulates the economic life of that society. Business can also be full of bad relationships. In forming relationships for material purposes (networking?), it's easy to make that a surrogate for a relationship with mankind in general ("I love mankind, it's people I can't stand"), loving one another and trying to bring goodness into the world (most religions), helping to maintain the essential goodness of nature. It's no wonder we often feel unloved in the process of business networking and conducting business. Your value is based on enterprise.

Much of our work is demeaned by the rule of authority, by stripping individuals of power to affect their destiny. To preserve the general populace when relationships go awry, we have the rule of law, which kicks in when relationships break down. In my rental business, I tell tenants when they sign the lease that if things go well, we will never again have to look at this lease.

It's little wonder then, that law and authority produce alienation in the process of trying to alleviate its bad affects. So we seek more connections hoping against hope the next one will be the ticket to something. What looked like a global village from a distance becomes a chance to feel alone in the universe.

In the Landesmuseum in Trier, Germany, I saw an interesting 1545 painting by Peter van Alst, called "Ascension of Christ." The bottom of the painting shows people reaching their arms into the sky. The top half of the painting shows two feet and the hem of a robe sticking out of the clouds. In the middle is open sky. It reminded me of the scene in Wizard of Oz where the balloon heads back to Kansas with Dorothy in it. "I can't stop, I can't stop," yells the Wizard as the munchkins wave their arms in the air.

As I look back at this verbal ramble, I am struck by the number of visual images that come to mind when discussing networking. Relationships are defined by the space between them and America is a big country. If you sleep with 20 other people in the same room or even on the same floor, I doubt that the issue of networking comes up. But without this basic human desire, would there be a YouTube?

2007-11-27T09:23:00.000-05:00

It's never really happened before-- here at moneyblows books & music, Christmas music stampeding out the door to customers all over the world. In recognition of the season, here are links to some of the items we still have left...!

With Perry Como on the cover, the sheet music of "There is no Christmas like a Home Christmas."
The sheet music of "White Christmas" arranged for organ by Rudolph Schramm.
The rare Bobby Darin 45 rpm single, "Christmas Auld Lang Syne", from 1960.
45 rpm single of Charles Brown, the definitive "Merry Christmas Baby" from 1962.
From 1977, with the original sleeve, The Kinks' 45 rpm single "Father Christmas." It contains the immortal refrain, "Father Christmas, give us some money."
The little known 45 rpm Christmas classic "Barnyard Christmas" by Spike Jones and his City Slickers featuring the Bell Sisters.
Again from 1977, The Vibra Corporation doing "Snow White Rock Christmas" on stereo 45 rpm. Perfect deejay item.
I may be in the minority, but to me, the 4 Seasons Christmas Album is one of the best ever.
Well, the Beach Boys Christmas album isn't bad either.
This 1980 album from the Chipmunks-- whose first hit was a Christmas novelty-- is called "The Twelve Days of Christmas."
We have several of Elvis Presley's Christmas albums, but this one is the prize.
This extremely rare Christmas album from Venezuela features Freddy Leon, Angel Chirinos, Jose Quintero and others. It's called Navidad Venezolana.
The Jackson 5 Christmas album from 1970 is a little hard to find now.
Leon Redbone even got in the act with this 1988 album Christmas Island. And, it wouldn't be a country Christmas without Tammy Wynette or Willie Nelson.

We also have plenty of delightful, collectible Christmas-related gift books, so stop by Moneyblows Books & Music for a look.

2007-11-26T11:50:00.000-05:00

Beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder, but it is definitely a two-way street. There was a prominent plastic surgeon on the West Coast who only worked on actors and other professionals, and spent the rest of his time on burn victims. His ex-wife Bea told me he had to guarantee anonymity to his actor patients, so not even she would know who he worked on in the image factory part of his life. But, they talked about the burn victims.
While he was working on a famous burn case, he was sleeping at the hospital while doing 22 reconstructive surgeries on a woman's face. His wife told him, "this case is ruining our marriage, can't you finish it or pass it along to someone else?"
Her husband replied, "why don't you go down to the hospital and have a look at her? Just make sure you don't change your expression when you first see her."
So the woman went down to the hospital and saw the victim, who looked horrifying. She went up to her bed and said,
"Mrs. Durbin, my husband was absolutely right. He said when I saw you I would be looking at two of the most enormous and beautiful blue eyes that the earth has ever seen."
The burn victim's eyes widened even more.
"You mean the doctor said that about me?"
The next time Bea saw Mrs. Durbin she was even more stunning than her eyes had suggested. It was at a glamorous party and there was no sign of the woman's horrible burn accident, on her skin anyway.
The plastic surgeon had more than just a knife to work with. He had the eyes of beholders.

2007-11-24T10:15:00.000-05:00

Many people have firmly developed tastes in music, matured over a long time listening. But there's something else getting lots of listening time and it's an evolving medium where the standards are anything but set. They're called audio books-- they can be just one person reading a book on a set of CDs-- such as President Bill Clinton's autobiographical memoir a few years back-- or they can be elaborate fictional productions such as the Pigalle Soundwalk, or entertaining seminars such as A History of The English Language by Michael D.C. Drout. Once you enter the world of audiobooks, you'll find everything from totally amateurish, boorish productions to amazing sound tricks wonderful enough to make a blind person see. (Reading for the blind was undoubtedly an early influence on this medium).
As a judge of the Audies competitions-- the national industry awards for audiobooks-- I've always been impressed by the criteria for excellence, well thought out and designed to bring out the best in this medium's producers. I will list some of these criteria, which are easy to apply when you are doing critical listening. I should also mention that audiobooks are easy to obtain through our moneyblows.net audio book store.

Suitability-- if it was an adaptation, such as a printed book, now produced to be listened to rather than read-- was the original suitable for adapting? Some books are better to skim or read out of order and audiobooks are clumsier for this purpose than a print version.
Performance-- there are all kinds of voices doing audiobooks, and as many tastes for listening. Still, you will know when you hear professionalism at work. Beyond sounding professional, a narrator can enhance the listener's experience by being appropriately chosen for the work; by using their vocal tools as a musician might use their instrument, varying pitch, timbre, tempo, rhythm, dialect, tone and inflection; and conveying the human touch we call emotion, inspiration, or passion.
Direction-- Like a movie, audiobooks are directed and one can often hear the results of the director's silent work. Is the pacing holding your attention? Is the use of music and sound effects appropriate, entertaining, and do they enhance the setting? Habitual audiobook listeners also want an easy transition among chapters, or sequence of CDs, etc.
Script--Many audiobooks are not based on previously structured productions such as printed books. More and more, production are being designed as original audiobooks. If so, issues of length, narrative flow, content and expression come into play. The palette of tools available to the audio producer can easily become a distraction to the story being told.
Engineering-- The audiobook has evolved very quickly as a full fledged member of the pop culture industry, the education industry, and the information industry. Nevertheless, there are still quality issues in engineering such as consistency, signal levels, relative sound mixing between words and music/effects, and overall mix. Some publishers are better than others at ensuring consistent audio mixes from product to product.
Listenability-- Finally, an audiobook should compel you to listen. If you don't like what you are hearing, don't blame all audiobooks. They are different as night and day. The flawless, complete integration of voice, direction, sound design and script is still a holy grail for producers and publishers, always sought and often falling short. Nevertheless, there's nothing like a good story well told.

2007-11-23T10:17:00.000-05:00

Got leftovers? Us too.

From 1976: Locking Horns, a reissue of late 1950s sideman dates with John Coltrane, Ray Draper, Joe Newman and others. A two-record set, Roulette RE 128.

From 1960: Sketches of Spain, Miles Davis, Gil Evans. A near-mint Columbia CS 8271-- beautiful original.

From 1974: Genesis Live, building their long career started in 1967, on Charisma 1666.

From 1968: The Brazilian legend Luiz Gonzaga, on RCA Camden with Os Grandes Sucessos De Luiz Gonzaga, a collection reissued during a period of huge musical ferment in Brazil.

From 1995: The Grand Ole Opry History of Country Music. This first printing is from the collection of Governor Jimmie Davis, with a gift inscription to Governor Davis from a friend. Of course the book includes the "Singing Governor."

From 1983, the rare UK Krazy Kat recording by Archibald, Ballin' with Archie. A seminal and underappreciated artist from the New Orleans scene, with music circa 1950-1952.

From 1985: live at the San Franciso Blues Festival, Clifton Chenier with his red hot Louisiana Band, an as-new Arhoolie issue.

We didn't just cook up these leftovers yesterday. They are all (except for the book) vinyl records, accidents of the music distribution industry, which forgot to make a disposable product and has since learned to make their product "self destruct" with the commencement of its digital license. When they were pressing this stuff from vinyl, nobody but collectors thought it would still be around today. Since it's Thanksgiving, here's a big thank you to record collectors who make the leftovers even better in the next century. Marinate on!

2007-11-22T11:59:00.000-05:00

On May 30, 1984, I was standing with three students on the floor of a training rig at Lafayette, Louisiana. They were vocational education students, learning how to engage the kelly and do whatever is done on oil rigs, most of it dangerous. They were the sons and grandsons of career roughnecks and knew a little about unemployment. At the time, it was synonymous with being in the oil business.
Practicing to drill a hole in the ground, everybody was occupied with something else on this day. One of the students popped the lens out of a welder's safety helmet he had brought from the shop. He held it up to the sun and looked through it. He passed it around among the small group on the training rig. Each student took a turn looking through the glass. The sun and the moon were lining up for an event that only happens every 24 years. It's noontime but twilight comes quick, a cataclysmic astronomical event that's briefer than a coffee break. A total eclipse of the sun.
Are we due for another total eclipse next year? It might come and go real fast, but the oil business takes its sweet old cyclical time. Almost a quarter century after the roughnecks were training for jobs that might never come, fuel oil is in another phase of its demand. As in, almost $100 per barrel of crude. Stocks in offshore drilling companies are soaring, along with the price of automobile fuel and heating oil.
Back then in Mississippi, a petroleum geologist was working on his back-up career-- writing. Another career that rises and falls. Now he is known as a writer and we have Oil Notes by Rick Bass in our store, a scarce copy autographed by its author.

2007-11-21T09:43:00.000-05:00

A.O. Scott, the New York Times reviewer, was positively bolluxed in his praise for Todd Haynes' new movie "I'm Not There" which apparently has several actors playing Bob Dylan, including Richard Gere, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Cate Blanchette, and some others. Like reality TV, this should spawn any number of imitative concepts, such as six actors each playing a version of Bruce Springsteen, or Hillary Clinton, or Bill Gates. In the meantime, it never hurts to become yet again confused by Dylan.

I will never forget my first Dylan spotting. It was the mid-1970s, perhaps 1975 or 1976, and Dylan's tour was called the Rolling Thunder Revue, appearing at the Tarrant County Convention Center in Fort Worth, Texas. I was playing that weekend as I always did at the New Bluebird Night Club on Wellesley St., with Robert Ealey and the Drifting Heartbreaks. T-Bone Burnett was on tour with Dylan, and had also produced Robert live at the Bluebird, so he was going to bring Dylan around to the blues club. Surely enough a limo pulled up around midnight or so and out stepped two important people, both in big hats. One was Dylan and the one with the floppy hat was Joni Mitchell I think. I suppose it could have been a hoax but we let them be when they sat at a booth in the corner and it sure looked like them. They stayed quite a while. The motto of the club was "Everybody is somebody at the Bluebird" and the locals would have noticed B.B. King or T-Bone Walker before they would have noticed Dylan. So, the celebrity visitors had a nice unhurried time of the blues, hosted by T-Bone (John Henry Burnett). Nothing changed on the bandstand but I may have drank more beer than usual out of nervousness. The next time I saw him was on his baseball diamond tour in Pawtucket, R.I., and on that bill was a gal blues singer from those Bluebird days who may have been singing with us that long-ago night, Lou Ann Barton. Thanks Bob for keeping your Fort Worth ties!

In our store at moneyblows books and music, we have some Dylan items of interest:

2007-11-20T09:21:00.000-05:00

When you buy shares of a company and watch the company's performance, it's called investment. When you buy stock and watch it go up and down, it's called speculation. That's the distinction made by Benjamin Graham in his book The Intelligent Investor, which is kind of a layman's version of the greatest investment book of all time, Security Analysis: Principles and Technique, by Graham and David Dodd. If you've been successful in the stock market you may not need this book, but you might be able to afford this First Edition which is in moneyblows books and music. Or this Fourth Edition which was revised in response to market conditions in 1960-61. Also, click to our business books page and find out about some of the other business literature that's dying to be heeded! In particular, take note of our new amazon business books store.

2007-11-19T16:53:00.000-05:00

Moneyblows Books and Music has customers all over the world because of the value placed on used books and records that come from America. After 9/11 one of our customers wrote from Greece, "I'm very sorry for the death of so many of your citizens. I'm also sorry that the hit was before my sending your payment. I hope it won't take ages to reach you. This is the payment for the second lot. Take care and don't let vengeance blind you or hurt your democracy." As exporters of vintage vinyl, we appreciate the establishment of the Library of Congress National Recording Registry. It acknowledges that physical specimens of historic recordings do not last forever. Follow this link to our music category page, where we list many of the items in the registry. From this same page you can browse our search our collection of vintage vinyl recordings, books, magazines, record needles and other interesting artifacts.